


Means to an End

by HardPass



Series: Low Ryder [2]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: A smidge of mystery, Arguing, Blood and Gore, Cockblocking twin, Coffee Addiction, Drama, Excessive crew gambling, F/M, Fluff, Grandpappy Drack, Like so much yelling guys I've used so many exclamation points, No references to Liam's disgusting couch yet but you can bet I will, Now with more drugs!, Romance, Sequel, Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll, Smut, a couch that's not Liam's, lots of yelling, okay more than a smidge of mystery, sassy ryder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-03-03 23:22:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 53,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13351656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardPass/pseuds/HardPass
Summary: Ryder and Reyes have two things in common: first, they're pretty sure they love each other, second, they hate each other's jobs. When a business deal goes south for Reyes, the Pathfinder and the Charlatan find their professional lives intersecting once again, but neither of them have to like it.





	1. Smuggler's Paradise

**Author's Note:**

> I LIIIIIIIVE. *insert mushu gif*
> 
> So this is a follow up to my long-ass fic from a while ago, Among Other Things. But that one is long af, so if you don't feel like reading it, I won't hold it against you. Just know, Ryder and Reyes boned a little, fought a lot, and generally decided they loved each other. My Ryder twins are named Violet and Avery cuz ain't nobody got time for default names. Violet became Pathfinder. Yadda yadda. Events more or less aligned with the game. 
> 
> If you're a returning fan from Among Other Things, WELCOME THE FUCK BACK. I told you I'd write more with these assholes, didn't I? The latter half of 2017 was rough on me and I struggled to write anything, so how did I start 2018? BY WRITING 15K WORDS IN THIS RANDOM ASS FIC SINCE WEDNESDAY. I got my mojo back. Dunno if any of it's good, but it feels good to vomit out content like this again. 
> 
> Anyway, thanks for dropping in. Likes and comments garner my utmost adoration. <3 May induce flailing.

The two-plus years since Reyes Vidal last stepped foot on the Nexus had rendered it unrecognizable. Dark, unused corridors gave way to busy byways churning with people of all races. Screens advertised directions and amenities overhead. Helpful holos provided instructions to enraptured tourists where they used to provide unhelpful error messages. Back before he abandoned ship, all of this had been dark and vacant, an empty shell of a fractured dream.

He leaned against the rail overlooking the commons between the cultural center, the docking bay, and hydroponics, munching on something deep fried that reminded him strongly of french fries, but still contained a bit of bitterness from whatever plant matter they originated as. Maybe more like eggplant than potato. To his left, a group of haughty salarians debated ship scheduling logistics with a team of angaran pilots using Shelesh, a language he barely had a grasp on. Leave it to the salarians to pick it within a few months of emerging from cryo. To his right, an asari flipped through a data pad with frequent, beleaguered sighs. She occasionally turned her moony gaze his direction. He’d made the mistake of smiling and winking at her when he first walked up with his snack. She was a bit younger than he first thought, not that it mattered. A bit of casual flirting wouldn’t lead anywhere--not if he liked his limbs in their proper order.

Almost subconsciously, his eyes swept over all of the humans in visible range, anxious he would catch a familiar face. Not that he would mind spotting her in the crowd, but he was in a restricted area on a fake passport with illegal intentions. Seeing her right now would put irreparable kinks in his plan.

Thankfully, his paranoia bred from an empty space. Her ship was scheduled to be docked on Voeld for at least another day and the risk of tripping over his deadly, beautiful Pathfinder wasn't high. He’d planned this trip with the intention that she would be far away for the duration of his visit.

A body wedged between him and the plaintive asari. A middle aged human with more salt than pepper in her wiry hair and pleats from a lifetime of sunshine and worry framing her mouth and eyes. She rested her back against the rail where he leaned, getting an eyeful before she said anything. She wore nondescript, casual civvies not unlike his own. Someone off duty. Perhaps a tourist. Nobody important. Eyes tended to glaze right over them.

“You’re looking good,” she remarked. “Weather must be improving on Kadara.”

“As long as the air is clear, I don’t care what the weather does. It’s good to see you, Gayle.”

Kadara still held the faint pungence of sulfur, but people found it infinitely tolerable to how it had been a year ago. In a few more years post-vault correction, it may even shed its reputation of stinking like the asscrack of Satan entirely.

Gayle jerked her chin, indicating he walk with her. He lazily detached himself from the rail, crumpling the empty, grease-stained paper snack sack and pocketing it. He slouched after her, heading closer to the shuttle offload area. Lots of ears to overhear their conversation, but too many voices to drown them out for it to matter.

“Your window of opportunity is exactly between 1324 and 1347 hundred hours.”

“More than I need,” he promised.

“The dock will be clear. Radar. Surveillance. People. Everything. You’ll be sent the codes ten minutes before. Just enter them in and the computers will do the rest.”

A sliver of opportunity, months in the making, all culminating into twenty-three minutes of no eyes or ears. The product he moved was a little different than what he originally planned, but he had to make opportunities where he could. Plans changed. Situations changed. Reyes prided himself on his ability to adapt and seize advantages.

Pulling up his omnitool, he put in for half of the credits transfer. She confirmed it on her end, nodding firmly.

“And the Pathfinders?” Gayle asked.

“All busy, as I promised.”

Distracting Violet and Avitus off station had been easy. With the right hands greased, a few crises erupted on different planets he knew they couldn’t resist. He didn’t know the other two personally, Sarissa and Hayjer, but he had a big network. He managed to get their attention in different corners of the system. With no AI plugged into the Nexus mainframe, Gayle’s hackers had free run of the place.

“Good doing business with you, Vidal.” Gayle hesitated one more moment. She could have taken her money and disappeared, her part of the transaction concluded. “Before you go, maybe you can settle something for me. Call it a curiosity.”

He shrugged noncommittally. “And what would that be?”

“I’m told you’re on good terms with several of the pathfinders. That’s why all of this worked.” She swirled her index finger around, indicating the Nexus and the various plans at play. “So why is it you were banned from Initiative property by one of them? Ryder, no less. Records say she personally filed the junction against you.”

He tossed her a jaunty wink, shoving his hands in his pockets and turning to go without answering. It wouldn’t do to give away too much of his mystery. Besides, few people knew the whole scandal of that situation. The Pathfinder might like keeping his bed warm on long, Kadaran nights, but she knew exactly who he was and pretended no differently.

Smuggler. Survivor. Charlatan.

She accepted those things for now, but she wasn’t about to get herself listed as an accomplice. He remained personally barred from all Initiative properties by his own girlfriend and she hadn’t budged an inch, no matter how the inconvenience strained on their personal lives. He both admired her unflagging self control and resented it deeply.

Reyes headed out to the docking bay, catching a lift out to the landing pad to the _Gambler_ , registered under her own falsified identity. After the battle on Meridian, she had undergone extensive repairs and upgrades and acquired a fresh paint job. His ship had needed some desperate upgrades even before the endlessly looping vids made the _Gambler_ one of the most recognizable ships in the system. She now no longer looked like a patchwork derelict sporting a tasteless Krogan battle mural across her side.

He checked the time after the docking computer released him and he floated out beyond the Nexus’s perimeter. 1245 hundred hours. A little bit of time to kill before heading back in to make the trade.

Kicking his feet up on the flight console, he checked messages on his omnitool, wishing he had another bag of the deep fried somethings he had been nibbling on earlier. As a hub of travel and trade, the Nexus contained a few luxuries he could only dream about. He would put deep friers on his next wishlist, drawing up mental lists of people who might help him get his hands on commercial models to gift to Kadaran food merchants.

Deep in the daydream about the fried foods he left behind in the Milky Way, his ship’s comms blipped almost three times before he dropped his feet heavily to the floor and answered.

 _“Hey, Vidal, you ready to get this show on the road?”_ a cheerful voice trilled.

"Just waiting on docking codes. How’ve you been, Luhana?”

_“Living on the Nexus is like a perma-vacation. I love it. I’ve been siphoning a shitton of new Meridian imports and I’m super stoked to start moving them.”_

“Yeah, that’s next on my list. Now that I’ve got an ID capable of passing through security, maybe I’ll come do a real visit and check out your whole operation.”

_“Shut your beautiful face, Vidal, are you serious? Yes! Come see me! I’ll give you the real tour of the station. This place is playground.”_

He grinned. Luhana had been one of his deep cover operatives on the Nexus since before he took over Kadara Port. She had a plucky, good natured attitude nobody ever seemed to suspect, but she had been critical for getting systems up and running to offload contraband from the station. Today, a new endeavor began. Nobody had yet figured out how to smuggle illegal items _onto_ the space station, but today, that changed.

“All right. Next quarter, I’ll do some more Nexus runs and we’ll play.”

_“Promise?”_

He grinned. “Would I lie?”

She twittered a giggle. _“Sending you the codes now. This is so exciting! I get to sell stuff!”_ She let out a shrill scream.

He lowered the volume on the console speaker. “I’m inputting the codes now. I’ll see you on the other side, Luhana.”

The computers took over his flight path, directing the _Gambler_ into the Nexus landing bay. Leaving the bridge, he raced down to the cargo bay to get product ready to be moved. The ship landed on one of the platforms, Nexus gravity taking over as his engines cut. By then, he had most of the crates unhooked and ready to be rolled out. He hit the console to drop the loading bay door.

Luhana bounced in, wearing Initiative issue coveralls all of the dock workers sported. Her asari coloring tended toward lilac, which he thought gave her a youthful glow, but it might have also been all of her bouncing and giggling. She swatted his ass as she passed, guiding a hover trolley to load.

“Looking fine, Boss. You been working out?”

“I’m spoken for these days, Luhana.”

“That wasn’t my question.

He grinned in the face of her unrelenting cheer. “Yes, actually, I have.”

They worked together to get the trolley loaded, guiding it off the _Gambler_ and onto the wide, vacant platform. While it was technically visible from the landing pads adjacent, they were both empty. In the unlikely event that any crew happened to be on one of them, they banked on being out before they could double-check manifests and realize anything was amiss.

They took out four full loads of contraband, which two of Luhana’s minions scurried in to secure and prepare to move, bringing him their own crates of illegal goods in exchange.

“We’ll get a drink the next time you come back. I want to hear all about this someone who’s got dibs on you these days,” the asari trilled, hopping on top of one of the crates he’d dropped off and patting it lovingly.

“You’re never going to believe me.”

“What? Is it someone I know?”

He only smiled mysteriously.

While his relationship with the human Pathfinder wasn’t technically a secret, they kept it lowkey. Her job came with standards and expectations that a lowlife smuggler didn’t always live up to, much less the Charlatan. With eyes constantly pointed at her, they decided not to shout their passion for each other from the rooftops. At least, not until he cleaned up his act. Which would be a while. He had a few years before retirement.

“You can’t just leave me on a cliffhanger. That’s just rude!” Luhana huffed.

Reyes opened his mouth to answer when a shout interrupted his comeback. He turned in time to see Nexus security roll onto the landing platform, guns drawn and raised. He jumped to his feet, flight instinct kicking in, but one dropped down and set off an EMP. Even if he made it past their shots into the _Gambler_ , they effectively grounded him. He still debated his odds before he had to comply with commands to put his hands behind his head and drop to the ground.

Shit.

The security agents quieted when nobody ran, going to each conspirator and cuffing them. Reyes found himself shoved against the hard, molded yellow surface of the landing platform, a knee digging in the middle of his back while his wrists were cinched together with thermal cuffs.

“Um. Boss. I don’t have a contingency for this,” Luhana hissed across to him.

“Let’s break open these crates and see what they’re hauling,” one of the guards crowed.

He closed his eyes, heart sinking.

“Boss!”

He glanced across to her with a subtle shake of his head to get her to shut up. She’d already painted him the ringleader. Which, if he had to take stab, might have been her attention all along. Burn him, paint herself as a collaborator, but clearly not the brains.

A uniformed salarian read out their legal rights upon arrest. After she was done, a turian growled, “Get him up.”

Hands grappled him to his knees. He complied, in no mood to get stunned on top of everything. A bulky, bristling turian crouched down in front of him, holding a sealed bag of shimmering powder, head cocked lightly, radiating a no-bullshit vibe.

“You really thought you were going to bring oblivion into my house? Somebody get me an ID. Who the fuck is this guy.”

While he may not have recognized Reyes, Reyes recognized his growl from the battle of Meridian. Head of Nexus security, Tiran Kandros. Violet spoke incredibly highly of him.

Violet. She was going to murder him.

“The file coming up is a fake. It passes initial inspection, but it’s a mess of inconsistencies beyond that.”

Kandros tossed the bag of drugs down and placed a clawed hand on Reyes’s shoulder, drawing close. “It won’t matter who you are after I’m through with you, but if you cooperate with me right now, I might put in a good word with the prison guards in whatever hole they throw you in.”

“You really don’t know how to negotiate, do you?”

His mandibles clicked irritably. “This is your one chance to get on my good side, friend.”

Setting his jaw, Reyes looked past the turian. “I’d like to talk to a lawyer.”

Kandros withdrew. “Have it your way. Take them down to processing and call the forensics team up here to catalogue all this shit. And get one of the Pathfinders. He’s in the system somewhere. Their SAM’ll find it.”

Violet was _really_ going to kill him.


	2. Confessions of a Charlatan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet gets called to the Nexus to deal with a security matter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also titled: "The One in Which Violet Yells a Lot"
> 
> Originally, these were two separate chapters, but I decided I wanted to move events along a little quicker so I played Frankenstein and spliced them together. It's alive...it's ALIVE!
> 
> Oh, also, my super talented friend made me some art of Violet! Behold! Her face!
> 
> http://ektetrolldom.tumblr.com/post/169746298252/tech-tech-more-of-my-friends-mass-effect-oc

They told her Voeld was in a warming period. A meltdown. An emergence from an ice age. The scientists measured increasing temperatures over the year and change since she corrected its vault, insisting that the planet might see a melt all the way to permafrost layers in the next decade.

And none of that made Voeld _warm_.

Violet checked the environmental readouts on her suit as she hiked around the frigid kett camp, buffeted by cutting winds and spears of ice slapping her laterally. The suit insisted its heat index hadn’t been compromised, but she was pretty sure her toes had gone numb an hour ago and things weren’t looking better.

“I think that’s the last of it,” Jaal huffed, nudging a prone kett over with his foot. Unlike the rest of them, his body acclimated to the cold fairly well.

She shivered. “Thank god. Back to the Nomad. Let’s get off this ice brick. One of the other planets _has_ to have a problem needing solving.” Or they could go back to the dead end hunt for the _Keelah Si’yah_ , the missing quarian ark. Anything but the biting, slicing, frigidity of Voeld.

The Nomad’s heat controls didn’t improve her mood or the sensation that her feet had turned to icicles. She gunned the engine and plowed through snow drifts with little regard to the terrain’s whims. Jaal slept noisily while Liam fidgeted with his guns quietly in the back seat, making the ride back peaceful, at least, even if she never really warmed up.

_“Ryder,”_ Suvi said over comms about halfway back. _“The Nexus is hailing all pathfinders, asking for one’s assistance with a security matter. It’s not high priority, but--”_

“Perfect! Dibs!”

_“We’ll get the engines warmed up and Kallo will schedule a flight path.”_

“And put a fresh pot of coffee on. I’m freezing my junk off out here.”

_“The coffee is a given.”_

Her team no longer fought her rampant caffeine addiction. Some had even joined her, requiring at least one cup before they were functional in the morning and working coffee expenses into their supplies budget. Lexi had long since given up trying to convince her to reduce her daily consumption.

She wheeled the Nomad directly into the cargo bay of the _Tempest_ upon return, which had melted most of the snow and ice around it during its warm-up. Gil confirmed from the engine room that they were clear for takeoff, although Kallo warned that winds would beat them up a little before they exited atmo.

Avery passed a steaming mug of coffee directly to her hands the second she clambered out of the Nomad. “The shadows under your eyes have shadows. You should get some sleep while we’re in transit or you might spook Tann when you see him.”

She saluted him with her middle finger, lifting the coffee to her lips as she headed into the _Tempest_. It perked her, stronger than most of the batches, indicating that Gil had been in charge of brewing a new pot. Everybody else complained, but Violet loved Gil’s coffee. It could make a cadaver sit up and walk off.

She swung by her quarters to change into casual wear, opting for old jeans with the knees blown out, work boots that had seen better days, their high tops folded down to her ankles, and a loose, thin grey sweater.

“Any messages while we were out, SAM?”

Her AI’s console fluttered. _“Only one, Pathfinder.”_

“Reyes?” she asked hopefully. He hadn’t gotten back to her since her last complaint about Voeld’s temperatures. She expected lavish descriptions of ways he would warm her up.

_“Sarissa Theris, I’m afraid.”_

She wrinkled her nose. She and the asari pathfinder had a terse, forcibly polite relationship. They each thought the other was the best person for their job, but that didn’t mean they had to like each other. “Is it important?”

_“It’s about vetting new pathfinder applicants.”_

“I’ll deal with it once we hit FTL,” she decided, taking a long gulp of coffee and heading toward the door.

She felt the internal inertia dampeners kick in as the _Tempest_ exited Voeld’s gravity and supplemented its own. She sloshed a little bit of coffee over the lip of her cup, but being right next to the galley, she popped in for a refill before heading up to the bridge, ignoring the mess on the stove from whoever last attempted a communal meal. They all missed Drack’s presence, especially his cooking, but he was busily playing grandpappy on the Nexus to help Kesh out with her clutch.

Up on the bridge, she settled into her post between Kallo and Suvi, setting her coffee down on the console--despite Kallo’s frequent pleas that she not. “So next time I’m like, ‘Let’s go to Voeld!’ remind me that I hate Voeld.”

“We always do,” Suvi snorted.

“Well, do it harder. Knock me out if that’s what it takes for me to stop making poor life choices.”

They both rolled their eyes and turned to their tasks. Leaning left, she lurked over Suvi’s shoulder at her pet project. They all wanted to find the _Keelah Si’yah_ and its thousands of sleeping inhabitants. The distress signal they’d picked up indicated they were in danger from the kett, and despite The Nexus’s best engineers hammering their faces against the problem, were no closer to uncovering the signal source or the missing ark. Lifting her coffee back to her lips, she decided not to inquire on its progress. If there were updates, someone would tell her.

“Did they mention what the security assist is for on the Nexus?” she asked instead.

Kallo sat back in his seat, long fingers steepled in front of him. “They want a SAM unit for some decription. It seems that somebody has been tampering with their personnel databases and they need to do a systems recovery.”

SAM would be more than up for the task.

“Avitus is racing us there.”

Now, she smiled and shook her head. “I thought he was fighting mutant plants on Havarl.”

“From what I understand, he was as desperate to get off of Havarl as you were Voeld.”

Voeld and Havarl were about equidistant from the Nexus and their ships were good enough to make it an interesting race.

“Gun it,” she suggested cheerfully.

Leaving her coffee behind on the console, ignoring Kallo’s low grumble, she took Avery’s sarcastic advice and slept while she could. Lexi would be pleased. In the past few months, she let the doctor bully her into something resembling a normal circadian rhythm. Even after clocking a full seven hours, she had enough time to deal with Sarissa’s email and take a shower before Kallo announced they were docked.

The Nexus always felt like home to Violet, but not in the pleasant, fuzzy sense most people had. She hadn’t grown up in a pleasant, fuzzy home. She grew up with mostly absent, critically overbearing, workaholic parents. Her mother, she knew, loved her and Avery dearly. Her father loved her mother and sort of got used to the idea of progeny after a while. The Nexus felt like home because of the discomfort, plays for power, and incessant bickering. It felt home because as soon as she stepped on board, she immediately wanted to leave again.

_“Avitus’s ship docked shortly before ours,”_ SAM warned her as she threaded her way through the crowds of people of all races toward the lift to take her operations.

“Sniping bastard.” She paused. If he beat her, he probably had half the problem solved and wouldn’t need a second brain on the task. “Send him a message. Tell him he sucks.” She changed course. “We’ll drop in on Drack and see how the clutch is doing.”

_“Message sent and delivered. I flagged it as urgent.”_

“You’re getting the hang of this, SAM. That’s almost devious.”

_“Thank you, Violet.”_

If she didn’t know better, she would say he preened a little under the compliment. While SAM utterly failed the nuance of swearing and ribbing, and failed most aspects of humor entirely, he had started to pick up on light pranking.

Violet didn’t make it three steps toward the residential blocks before her omnitool pinged with an incoming communication.

_“It’s from Avitus. Flagged as urgent. It says to get to HQ and to, and I quote, ‘haul ass.’ Do you think he’s kidding us back?”_

She scanned over the message with pursed lips. It didn’t provide any details except for the location of a debrief room within the security wing. “I honestly can’t tell, but I’m curious. Let’s go see if he actually needs something.”

Diverting her path again, she pushed her way through a crowd of squabbling salarian scientists and skirted lost looking angarans who might be tourists, she managed to duck into a crowded shuttle headed toward HQ just before it hit capacity.

The Nexus teemed with life these days. Upon her first arrival, most of it had been dark and creepy. None of the arks had arrived, so the station conserved energy and worked with a skeleton crew, half of which had also jumped ship during the uprising. Those left needed a timely miracle before they ran out of food, water, air, or all of the above. Back then, the station seemed big and hollow and despondent. Now, she could barely squeeze into the shuttle.

It made several stops at parts of the section to have opened up since things started improving. People disembarked. More crushed on. Violet stood as unobtrusively off to the side as she could, smiling a bit when she spied an asari and angaran holding hands.

When the shuttle dumped her in HQ, she had to pause to get her bearings. It had bloomed, every computer bank and vacant position filled with the people who made life in Andromeda possible. They were the master coordinators, the center of everything, a lifeline to arks and outposts and everything in between.

Veering starboard, she marched to the debrief meeting room pinned on her map and let herself inside, hoping to slip in quietly to observe and figure out the issue before jumping feet first into the mess.

The room contained only contained six people, despite the space and chairs provided. A long table with a built-in tech interface dominated most of the room, although its shiny surface was black and inert just now. On one side of the table, Jerun Tann, Tiran Kandros, and Avitus Rix all stood. On the other side, a young man with blonde hair in need of a trim and an ill-fitting business suit sat next to a swarthy, bored looking man she’d know anywhere in the galaxy, Reye Vidal. Flanked by them were two Nexus security guards. Reyes’s hands were cuffed and resting on the table in front of him next to a glass of water.

“What the hell?” she blurted, so caught off guard she could only stand and gape in the doorway.

All heads swiveled toward her.

“Ah. Pathfinder Ryder. We were just getting Avitus up to speed,” Tann, Initiative Director, announced cheerfully.

She stabbed a finger at Reyes. “What is he doing here?”

The salarian perked. “You know him?”

“Violet, I can explain,” Reyes said, panic crossing his features. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“I advise you to stop talking,” the young blonde in the suit next to him murmured.

“He’s not allowed on Nexus property. What is he doing here?” she repeated, her voice raising with each syllable.

Kandros strode toward her, slapping a packet of something dark and shimmery into her hand. “From what we can put together, smuggling drugs in, and smuggling guns out.”

Reyes anchored pleading eyes on her. “Violet, just let me explain.”

“I would _love_ to hear that explanation,” Tann purred.

“Do not say anything,” the young man--a lawyer, it occurred to her--hissed.

She looked down at the packet in her hand, then at her lover, then to Kandros, Tann, and Avitus, her heart plunging. Mouth slightly agape, pieces connecting, she got a fingernail in her temper and kept from pulling her gun. She wasn’t sure who she would shoot first anyway. Lips pressing in a hard line, she clenched her hand around the drugs.

“Smuggling. Drugs. In,” she said slowly, rounding on him.

“Violet, please…”

“And smuggling guns out.”

“We caught him in the act. We’re working on his identity and a confession,” Tann told her smuggly. “If you think you can get it from him more expediently, I’m more than happy to pass the investigation over to your capable hands.”

She was pretty sure she wasn’t breathing, but that didn’t matter. Voice tighter than a piano wire, she said, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to recuse myself from this one, Tann. Avitus will have to puzzle it out without me. Now, I need the room and I need to talk to him.”

The director eyed her skeptically. “Talk to him? After recusing yourself?” he repeated.

“Yell,” she corrected, her control slipping. “I’m going to _yell_ at him.”

Kandros, the better observer of the bunch and the only other one out of the loop, surveyed the room with a trained eye. “Who is he?” he demanded.

“My name,” Reyes sighed, beleaguered, “is Reyes Vidal. Now would you please clear the room so she can yell at me?”

“Reyes Vidal.” Kandros’s mandibles clicked twice. “You were at the battle for Meridian. I remember you. You brought Kadara in.”

“I’d salute you, but…” He jostled his shackles slightly.

“Anything else, Ryder?” Tann huffed impatiently.

She ground it out, each word cutting into her like knives. “And he’s my boyfriend.”

Only Avitus had known. The other two reared back in surprise, gazes flicking between the two humans.

“You’re dating a _drug dealer_ ,” Tann gasped. She could see scandalous news headlines flash before his eyes.

Her lips peeled off her teeth. “That’s to be determined. Now, kindly, get out.”

Not many people ordered the Director of the Andromeda Initiative around, and she and Tann had a terse relationship, at best. However, eyes narrowed to slits, he allowed Kandros to pull him out, Avitus slouching after them.

“What the fuck?” the other pathfinder whispered on his way by.

“I’m about to find out.” She pointed to the guards.  “Those two, out, too.”

Kandros hesitated in the doorway.

“What? You think he’s going to get the drop on a pathfinder?”

“I’m more worried about his safety than yours.”

Apparently, she had less of a handle on her temper than she hoped. At one blistering look, he ordered the guards out of the room, leaving only Reyes Vidal and his bright-eyed lawyer. The door clicked closed softly and she rounded on her quarry, tossing the packet on the table between them.

“Drugs, Reyes? Are you fucking kidding me? You brought drugs onto the Nexus?” she exploded.

“ _Hermosa_ ,” he crooned, but whatever he tried to say drowned under her wrath.

“No! Don’t you ‘ _hermosa_ ’ me! This is my work, Reyes, my job! That is my boss!” She took a wild stab in the direction Tann had gone. “Smuggling, fine. Whatever. I can deal. But drug dealing? Weapons dealing? You’ve gone too far. Those are deal breakers!”

He seemed resigned to slouch and let her wear herself out, but the mention of deal breakers snapped him upright in his seat. He'd lost her once to his deceits. “Violet, please, just listen--”

“What part of any of my face makes you think I want to listen to a single word you have to say? You listen, you stupid, selfish little man.” She slammed her hands down on the table between them, leaning across it.

“Oh, now, that’s just uncalled--”

“Do you not realize what I have on the line with this? My entire reputation! I put up with so much shit on your behalf.”

“We agreed there would be things we couldn’t discuss because of our jobs,” he squeezed in.

“Not drug dealing! And why, of all places, would you bring it to the Nexus? Did you even think about what you would do if you got caught? What it would do to me? We aren’t talking a slap on the wrist and a merry exile back to Kadara. You will see real jail time. Hard jail time. I can’t just pull a couple of strings and make this go away. Neither can Avitus. Your extra lives are used up. This is not something I can get you out of. How could you do this to me? To us?”

“I’m sorry--”

“Yeah, well, so am I.”

Exhausted, she dumped down into the chair across from him, slumping her head into her hand, unable to even look at him. Reyes sat back, finally biting back whatever else he wanted to say. Violet would listen, but not before she’d gotten out everything else she had to say.

When the silence dragged, she finally looked up, avoiding his wounded eyes, and glanced over to his dumbstruck lawyer. He looked like a kid playing in his father’s clothes.

She let her hand drop to the table with a smack. “What charges is he looking at?”

“Oh. Um.” He fidgeted with the datapad in front of him. “The...um...the smuggling. The drugs. As well as some modified tech and miscellaneous items not strictly illegal, but not easily procured. And then the illegal purchase of contraband weapons. Those are the big ones. There’s also the falsification of passport documents and they’re going to try to pin the discrepancies in their personnel system on him unless he provides names of the accomplices actually responsible.”

“They caught him in the act. He’s going to have to plea out, isn’t he?”

“Well, that’s what we have to look at. If it goes to trial…”

“He’ll lose. A plea deal is his best solution. Lord knows he has contacts he can rat out in exchange for less time or comfier digs or something.” She dragged a hand down her face, suddenly exhausted. “I need a cup of coffee.”

Reyes leaned forward, struggling to catch her eye. “Would you please listen to me?”

For a moment, she thought back to the cave where he had Sloane Kelly shot in the head, shortly before taking Kadara Port. He’d revealed himself as the Charlatan, much to Violet’s surprise. She’d broken up with him then. And punched him. Neither felt good, but it had been the right move at the time. He’d taken advantage of her. They only reconciled after the battle of Meridian.

People constantly accused Violet of being young and naive. Reyes Vidal was the only person who made her actually feel it.

“Fine.” She rubbed her temple. “Let’s hear it.”

“I never wanted to get involved with oblivion, but it was the best call. There is another group gaining traction on Kadara. Drug runners. Bad men that are making my streets unsafe who are going after my power there. No matter what I do or what resources I throw at them, I can’t find the head of the snake to cut off. I don’t know how, but they make a lot of money smuggling oblivion onto the Nexus and outposts. I’m not starting anything new. It’s already here. The plan was to sell cheap, undercut their profits, and weaken them so they either implode or can't sustain their operation. I bought my own oblivion to drive their business into the ground. After I took out the kingpin, I planned on cutting off the tap. This was always supposed to just be temporary, a means to an end.”

She folded her arms, chewing the inside of her cheek. The story sounded a little idealistic for him. If Reyes really wanted his drug kingpin gone, he could have called her. He had to stand to benefit off this venture somehow. Regardless, he put the drug buyers at risk. He was sacrificing innocents caught in addiction for his own self-preservation.

“And the guns?” she pressed.

He spread his hands until the cuffs reached their limit. “Kadarans love guns.”

She shook her head in disgust. “Damn it, Reyes. Why didn’t you come to me or Avitus about the oblivion dealers?”

“Because you can’t solve all of my problems for me, _hermosa_.”

“And what about the addicts here? What about their problems?”

He groaned, head tipping back. “They’re adults. If they want to pump toxins into their own bodies chasing a high, who are you to regulate it? Tell them they can’t? It’s not your job to babysit every idiot here in Andromeda.”

“You don’t honestly believe that? Keeping these drugs out of the hands of innocent people--”

He barked a laugh. “Innocent? They’re people, Vi. Nobody’s innocent.”

“I’m not going to hand them ways to ruin their lives on a silver platter and sell it to them cheaper than the competition!”

“It’s their choice, good or bad.”

“It's illegal, no matter what bullshit philosophy you spin on it.”

They faced off stubbornly, eyes matching from across the table. She loved him, but sometimes, she wanted to kill him.

Finally, he sat back, bunched shoulders relaxing. “We have another angle to consider. Keema won't just let me rot here. Tann can't jail me without a major political riot in his hands.”

The lawyer cleared his throat, flipping through screens on his datapad. “Keema?”

Reyes grinned sidelong at Violet, who rolled her eyes, then turned to address the lawyer. “I'm protected by client confidentiality, right, Mr. Valish?”

He nodded. “Yes. Whatever you tell me, I'm bound by law…”

“Good enough. I'm the Charlatan.”

The young man turned his eyes to the screens again, lost. “The...ah...oh. Um.”

“He hasn't been out of cryo long, has he?” Violet sighed. “He's the shadow king of Kadara. Only a handful of people know his true identity, now, I guess, including you. Keema is the face of his enterprise. But he's forgetting one thing. Keema will leave you to Tann if she decides she wants to usurp your power.”

He pouted. “Keema wouldn't do that to me. She loves me.”

“One of the others might. Few know who you are, but with you stuck on the Nexus, they might get big ideas.”

He frowned a little. “We'll have to wait and see. Why don't we call Tann back in? My best move to keep him from filing formal charges just yet is to tell him my identity and let the implications sink in.”

“Tann hates the exiles. Why would he do you any favors?”

He shrugged. “For lasting peace in Helius?”

She curled her lip and turned to Mr. Valish. “How much do you charge? Because I'm going to need my own lawyer if he spills the beans. Dating you is one thing, Reyes. Tann doesn't get a say in my personal life. But I've deliberately withheld your identity as Charlatan and Tann’ll collapse a sphincter when he realizes I'm in bed with you. He'll see my omission as taking your side.”

Reyes grinned, his dimple flashing in the corner of his cheek. “You did take my side.”

“I kept your secret for Kadara, not for you,” she reminded him sternly.

It didn't matter. Tann would view it as a betrayal in the name of her lover, despite her frequent explanations of her motivations. Nexus brass barely contained their leaks and Kadara was too unstable to handle any more upsets. Revealing Reyes put him in direct danger and Kadara on the road to more power upheavals. Reyes, for all his shit-talking, had plans for economic stability and governmental independence. He needed time to make it work, so she gave it to him. At her own expense, it appeared.

“I didn't mean to get you into trouble, _amor,_ ” he crooned apologetically.

“Self-preservation has always taken priority over our relationship, so why should I even act surprised?”

“You know that's not true,” he protested, his voice surprisingly unyielding.

She stood, stretching out her bunched arms and shoulders, and rounded the table to his side. His eyes darkened with a familiar dash of lust he usually got when he studied her. Leaning down, bracing her hand on the back of his chair, she met his gaze several inches from his face.

“Tell me the truth.”

She could never tell when he lied to her. It scared her. He had so much power in their relationship, and she didn't fully trust him not to abuse it. In the months since the battle for Meridian, she'd settled into complacency. This served as a reminder that Reyes was not the unassuming, quick-witted rogue he often pretended at. He was cunning, occasionally ruthless, controlling, and disturbingly patient. Above all else, he was a survivor.

“I brought the drugs on as a temporary business venture to collapse a rival’s revenue stream. I was buying guns because there's a huge demand for them on Kadara and I want to control the market. And I love you. More than anything.”

Probably not more than he loved himself, but she had long since made her peace with that. She pressed a brief, yet forgiving, kiss on his mouth. He would have taken more, but she backed up quickly and someone had shackled his ankles to the chair, preventing his chase.

Beside them, the forgotten lawyer seemed to have compiled his notes. He laced his fingers together on top of the table. “So, moving forward, shall I contact Keema Dohrgun and see what kind of pressure she can apply for your release?”

He nodded. “Although, odds are, she already knows. My spies here will have known the deal went south and I was taken into custody.” He turned his gaze to Violet. “Would you do me a favor?”

She folded her arms. “You seriously want to talk favors right now?”

His dimple flashed briefly. “Could you work on deals for my other people they took into custody? Start with Luhana Serna. She was arrested with me. She's my Nexus contact. Spring for banishment and get her and her people to Kadara.”

Tann was going to flay her for helping criminals. Jaw tight, she nodded and headed out of the debrief room.

Tann could suck a lemon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What are you talking about? The lawyer totally isn't based loosely off of Foggy. How dare you accuse me of that? I'm totally original!


	3. Negotiations for a King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keema forces everybody's hands in negotiations for Reyes's freedom.

Reyes needed to take a moment to breathe. Not only did he survive the encounter, but so did his relationship. The last time Violet walked in on his Charlatan business unexpectedly, she had nearly broken his orbital socket and dumped him. The livid fury in her eyes when Kandros handed her the packet of oblivion matched the look she gave him upon the revelation that he was the Charlatan.

Scraping his hands down his face, he glanced to Peter Valish, his public appointed lawyer. “That’s the second time she's pointed that level of wrath at me. Getting shot at is more fun.”

“It says here in your file that she personally filed a motion to forbid you access to Initiative properties a little over a year ago?”

“That would be from the last time she was this mad at me.”

The guards and Kandros reentered the room.

“I need some time to make some calls before we negotiate a plea bargain,” Mr. Valish intoned, standing.

“See Mr. Vidal back to his cell,” the turian ordered the guards. “We'll set up a meeting for tomorrow.”

Before they could unlock Reyes’s ankles for mobility, a new hurricane swept into the room. Director Addison, spitting fire and fury, followed by a spluttering Tann, an anxious Avitus, and a tense Violet. The door hissed closed again.

“Somebody explain to me why Keema Dohrgun is pointing suborbital missiles at Ditaeon and demanding that man's release, _right now_!” the woman bellowed, stabbing an index finger at Reyes.

He smirked over to Violet. “I told you she wouldn't leave me here.”

Addison rounded on him. “Who are you?” She wasn't asking about his name. They knew that. She wanted to know who he was to Kadara.

He leaned back in his chair, feeling better. In control. Capable of finally making some demands. Bless Keema. He would owe her forever for this one. He could deal with political consequences later.

“I'm the Charlatan.”

Violet closed her eyes and sagged. Nobody else in the room stirred for a full heartbeat. Tann turned toward the two pathfinders, who both avoided his steely gaze.

Slowly, Peter Valish resumed his seat and pulled out his notes. “Mr. Vidal, AKA the Charlatan, is an important figure on the planet of Kadara, as evidenced by their government’s harsh response to his imprisonment. I move to treat him with political exemption for his crimes and have him returned to his planet forthright to avoid violence from either party. Additionally, Mr. Vidal demands that his alternate identity not be discussed or committed to any report or database, as it poses a serious security threat to him if uncovered.”

Tann ignored the lawyer, fixated on Violet and Avitus. “You both knew.”

Jaw clicking, rage boiling in her dark eyes, she replied coldly, “I had him banned from Initiative properties for a reason.”

Addison didn't seem to give a single fuck. “If I lose a single soul in this standoff…”

“He brought twenty kilos of oblivion on board the Nexus! We can't just surrender him without consequence!” Kandros barked.

“I have missiles pointed at an outpost! Figure it out!”

Reyes lounged back in his chair, hands folded neatly. “You can't afford a war with Kadara. This has been true since the beginning. It's half the reason I overthrew Sloane.”

“We cannot just let him walk,” the turian pleaded.

“I have a suggestion,” Violet sighed.

Tann nearly tripped over his words in his haste and fury. “I don't want to hear a single thing from you, Ryder! I have half a mind to lock you up as a co-conspirator!”

Ignoring him, she pressed on. “Reyes values two things the most: Kadara’s prosperity and his ship. So ground him. Put him on house arrest on Kadara and impound his ship here for…” She eyed him, her mind shifting through possibilities. “...Six months should be enough to drive him crazy.”

“Six months!” he exploded. “You can't hold my ship for six months!”

Although he should have probably considered himself lucky she didn't bring up the fact that he stole the _Gambler_ from the Nexus in the first place. It had been scrubbed of ID tags and upgraded so it wasn't easily recognized, but he knew they would reclaim it permanently if they found out. Keeping that information to herself probably put her at further risk from her boss if it ever came to light. The _Gambler_ could haul a pathfinding team. It was the second best ship to survive their mishaps with the Scourge, the _Tempest_ , of course, being the first.

“I'm satisfied. Leave his identity as the Charlatan out of reports. Put a tracker on him and have the pathfinders determine a radius on Kadara. Economic sanctions will be implemented if he violates them. I'll have my people write up a contract. We'll hang onto his ship for the duration of his house arrest,” Addison declared.

Tann acquiesced with a nod. Thankfully, avoiding bloodshed took top priority, despite his outrage at his pathfinders withholding information that put them in this position. Reyes thought Tann was a shit leader--he’d left because of it--but maybe he finally learned a few things over the last few years of his tenure.

Reyes also knew he should be grateful for Violet’s negotiations, but she'd gone against his ship. After losing it to Zia for months, barely getting it back, and then crashing it during the Meridian battle, he felt like he barely ever got to fly. House arrest alone would destroy him, but he couldn't risk bringing down economic sanctions on his city, not without delaying his plans for true independence. He hated how effectively she'd exploited his weaknesses. It also kind of turned him on. One did not fuck with the Pathfinder.

Valish gathered up his materials. “I'm also satisfied.” Leaning to Reyes, he whispered, “We won't get better offer. I suggest you take it.”

He straightened up, masking his distaste. Grounded. Again. “I want my partners exiled with me. Luhana and her people involved.”

“Fine,” Tann agreed.

Addison turned to go. “I'll talk Keema down and have someone prepare the trackers. Who is going to deliver him home?”

“Me.”

Surprisingly, nobody argued with Violet. But then again, she had a way of making her voice utterly unyielding. No doubt, her bosses recognized it.

With nobody happy with the outcome, they grumpily dispersed from the room.

“Ryder. My office. Now,” Tann barked as they left.

When they were gone, Kandros personally unlocked Reyes’s shackles to escort him back to his cell until everything was settled for his return. The turian glared, and as he hauled Reyes to his feet, he leaned in close, claws digging into his shoulder, subvocals dropping almost below human auditory range.

“If you or any of your people bring drugs onto my station again, and I will personally shove every kilo up your ass.”

“Kinky,” he replied with a jaunty grin. “Bring lube?”

Kandros shoved him forward in disgust. “What the hell does Ryder see in you?”

“I can be very charming.”

“I can't see her covering for you this long.”

He faltered. “As flattered as I am that she did, she did it for her own reasons, not for me.”

She had always been clear about that, especially when they were broken up. He always expected her to rat him out in an act of petty vengeance during that time, but Violet saw the big picture. She knew doing so came with severe consequences, not just for him.

Then, because he didn't want any of his actions misconstrued, he ground to a halt, forcing Kandros to pause as well. “She was wrong about one thing. There is something I value more than my ship and my city. Her. And I understand the hits she’s taken for me. I would never take that for granted.”

“Is that what you'll tell her after Tann’s through reaming her out?”

He set his shoulders proudly. “My _amor_ has died three times and raised a remnant fleet without an AI to interface. She has faced hostile planets and bent them to her whims. I've watched her throw her own body on a grenade to it from harming others and be shot point-blank only to rise moments later. Violet Ryder is indestructible. Tann is an insect compared to what she's been through.”

Kandros almost smiled. “Yeah. And what does she see in you?”

“I kiss her bruises and give her orgasms.”

“Anybody could do that.”

“Not the way I can.” Chin set proudly, he strode forward, leaving Kandros to scurry unexpectedly to catch up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So side note, but I accidentally dumped an extra dose of thriller conspiracy into later chapters. I feel like this fic is turning into an episode of Black Mirror...


	4. Damage Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet's crew knows how to manage their Pathfinder.

The Nexus’s collection of social areas had expanded over the last year. With viable planets to import and export goods, businesses blossomed, but Violet always found herself drawn to the bar that started it all, the Vortex Lounge. They knew her preferences and the regulars and staff had already heard all the stories, so she could usually drink there without anyone bothering her.

She slouched over a glass of bourbon, motioning for a refill from Dutch. He gave her a double and left without a word, as scowly and surly as ever. She tipped it back for a gulp as a hulking body settled into the stool next to her, making it groan with the effort to hold a krogan’s full weight.

“Bad day, huh?”

She toasted him with the glass. “Not the worst I've dealt with, but the last few months of relative peace got me lazy. Escaped the grandkrogans, did you, Drack?”

He set a paper cup, gently steaming, next to her and pried the bourbon out of her fingers. She smiled, accepting the exchange for coffee.

“Does this have something to do with the chatter I overheard about Kadara Port pointing missiles at Ditaeon earlier today?”

She forcibly relaxed her jaw and lifted the coffee to her lips. “You know my dumbass boyfriend?”

“Hard to forget that conniving idiot.”

Drack had never fully gotten on board with her relationship. He held Reyes at a skeptical distance, something she appreciated. She could always rely on a blunter shape of truth from him, and despite his disapproval, she could trust him not to interfere. Her own father would have never stood back.

“Well, that conniving idiot got himself caught smuggling drugs onto the Nexus and trying to smuggle guns out.”

Drack burst out laughing and drank her bourbon. “What a fucking asshole.”

“Long story short, Keema made it impossible to hide his other name to Nexus brass, which, as you can imagine, comes with all sorts of additional complications.”

“So, what happens now?”

“Political exemption--with some repercussions. He's sentenced to house arrest and they're holding onto the _Gambler_ and threatening economic sanctions if he doesn't sit still and not fuck anything up for six months. I fly him back to Kadara this afternoon once they get the treaties signed.”

He patted her on the back, which nearly threw her off the stool. “Ditch him. He's a fuckup and he'll drag you down with him.”

She didn't reply right away, sinking into her coffee for a few minutes. When she spoke, she said, “He claims the reason he brought drugs on board is to undercut a rival he's afraid is getting too much power. He wants to choke out their main revenue stream, which allegedly comes from Nexus drug deals.”

“Why didn't he come to you? Or hell, go to Avitus?”

“That's exactly what I said. I'm going to spend some quality time on Kadara, see if I can get to the bottom of it. Whether or not it's in Reyes’s interest, I can't let a drug lord rise up there. There are still power grabs happening on that planet and Reyes clearly can't control them all.” She took a measured sip of coffee. “He doesn't know how this drug lord is getting his product on board. You up for some old fashioned detectiving between babysitting duties?”

“I thought you'd never ask.”

He'd never admit it, because he loved Kesh’s children dearly, but he got bored sitting still for so long, playing domestic extraordinaire. A little mystery would give him a much needed reprieve. She couldn't promise he would get shot at, but he might get to be on the front lines for some arrests and get some drug dealers to soil their britches.

“So.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “How are the babies?”

A slow smile spread across his craggy features. “Big. Feisty. Bowling balls of energy.”

Krogan infants, unlike human infants, were damn near indestructible and fought each other from day one. They also grew exponentially in their first year and were probably already half the size they would reach at full maturity.

“Talking more?” she asked.

“Nonstop. They miss you.”

“I miss them.”

She spent time on video chats with him and Kesh’s offspring, but couldn't visit in person since the first couple of weeks after their births. They didn't have enough impulse control and she was too fragile. After they hit about a forty five kilograms each, they decided it best to keep humans out of the nursery until they learned how to manage their own strength.

“Thanks for the coffee, Drack. And the chat.”

He shifted his considerable weight, craggy face softening. “Hey, kid. Whether you need me to stand up and witness your vows to an officiant, or stand up and witness your alibi to a judge, I'm on your side.”

She reached out and squeezed his forearm. “Thanks, old man.”

“I have a shovel just waiting and I know some corners of Elaaden nobody will ever find a body.”

“I appreciate it. Truly.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“Don't I always?”

She left the Vortex took off back toward the commons, groaning when her twin brother peeled away from chatting up a cluster of giggling asari and fell into step with her just outside hydroponics. He plucked the mostly-empty paper cup out of her hands and replaced it with a full one. Her shipmates knew how to run damage control when her temper flared up, which she couldn’t decide if annoyed or pleased her. She took a drink from the new cup.

Violet couldn’t be considered short, with a long, athletic body, but Avery towered over her and the rest of the general population. They had similar, dusky coloring, although his dark hair tended toward curls while hers evened out into voluptuous waves, but Avery drew the genetic short straw and received a large, hooked nose from their father, which had blessedly skipped her. He adjusted his worn, N-7 jacket that he’d claimed from their father’s belongings before she could dump it all in the garbage. They had different opinions on their father in general. Violet spent every moment since his death shaking off his shadow while Avery clung to his rose-colored glasses looking back.

“Avitus debriefed the _Tempest_ while you cooled off.”

She nodded, grateful she didn’t have to repeat her afternoon much more than she already had. “Well, the truth is out there. There’s no taking it back now.”

“Why’d he get into drug smuggling? That doesn’t seem like him.”

That part of the conversation Avitus hadn’t been privy to, so she found herself explaining the story anyway, going over what she just told Drack about Reyes’s supposed reasons for attempting to bring drugs aboard the Nexus.

“I bet there’s more to the story, something he’s not telling me. Thankfully, we have a few hours in FTL where I can corner him and pry it out,” she concluded grimly as they sat down to watch the shuttles come and go out of the massive, transparent wall dominating the entire bulkhead of the commons.

“Something’s not adding up,” he agreed, spreading his long legs and taking up about half of the bench. “If Reyes got all of the SAM units off the Nexus and his team had a twenty-odd minute window where all surveillance around that dock was shut down, who tipped off security? How the hell did he get caught?”

That hadn’t been where her brain went. She opened her mouth, shut it, and shrugged. “I mean...I don’t know.”

“Somebody in on that plan didn’t keep quiet about it. Reyes better take a hard look in house. He’s got a leak.”

“Hold that thought. SAM, could you open a channel to Kandros, please?”

_“Right away. You’re connected.”_

“Kandros, who tipped you to Vidal’s smuggling operation?”

The turian paused before replying. _“It came through an anonymous tip line. Why?”_

“Just curious. Any way to chase it back to the source?”

_“You think your boyfriend has a rat in his crew?”_

“Or maybe someone pulling double-duty with his supposed drug rival. Might be a clue to figure out who they are and how they’re getting their drugs on board.”

_“I’ll look into it.”_

“Oh, and Kandros. I asked Drack to poke around. He’s bored. He needs something to take his mind off of krogan babies. Think you could triangulate with him? Keep him in the loop?”

For a moment, the head of security seemed to consider refusing her, to keep the issue confined to his security team, but even he knew the old krogan’s help would give him an unparalleled edge. _“I’ll talk to him. Thanks for the lead.”_

Lifting the coffee back to her lips, she took a long drink and considered the conversations ahead of her with Reyes. More business. Maybe a little bit more yelling. Conspiracy theories. Probably other things, but she wasn’t yet calm enough to forgive him enough for those. She dug her fingers into her temple to take the pressure off of her rising headache.

Groaning, she tipped her head onto Avery’s bulky shoulder. “Am I being stupid?”

There were two people in Andromeda she trusted to give her an honest answer. Drack was one, Avery, the other. While Drack had over a thousand years of hard-earned experience, Avery knew her long, sordid history of making mistakes with the men. He held nothing back when it came to calling out her idiocy.

“I think he’s being stupid. Not necessarily you.”

“You think he’s gone too far with the drugs?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never fully understood his business. Reyes works by his own code.” He scratched his stubble-shadowed jaw. “But he’s not terrible, as far as grand master puppeteers go. I mean, this whole shitshow...” He glanced around. “I guess in a way, I can see how there might be some nobility behind his intentions.”  

She withdrew sharply off his shoulder. “You’re kidding, right?”

“He didn’t call you to take care of it, Vi.”

“Yeah, I kind of noticed that.”

“If he was a true bastard, he’d call you to solve all of his problems. That’s what manipulators do. They use. They don’t handle their own shit when they have someone more capable at their beck and call. If this drug kingpin and his army of shadowy drug dealers is dangerous, he may have decided to take care of it himself to keep the risk to you at a minimum.”

Violet stilled. She hadn’t considered that Reyes not calling her might have been an attempt to protect her. She put herself in danger on the daily--it was basically the top line of her job description. It didn’t really occur to her that the people closest to her might try to mitigate some of that.

“Remember when he _did_ use you?” Avery pressed gently.

She did. She remembered that ugly, sinking feeling when it became clear she had been nothing but a convenient tool for his disposal, that he had been leading her with a carrot on a stick the entire time. She remembered cycling through their every interaction, second-guessing all of his motivations.

“He said things would change. Well, they changed,” her brother concluded, clapping his big hands together and leaning forward to brace his arms on his thighs.

“You’ve never once defended one of my boyfriends.”

“Yeah, well. Like I said. Reyes isn’t terrible.”

“If your theory is correct.”

He grinned. “I guess we’ll find out soon.”

 _“Pathfinder, Reyes is being escorted to the commons as we speak,"_ SAM informed her.

“Real soon.” Avery stood. “I’ll meet you back on the ship.”

“Sure.”

Violet retreated to the shuttle terminal to wait at arrivals, trying to appear nonchalant as she scuffed her boots against the polished floor, slouching against the wall between advertisements and potted plants. SAM gave her the heads up when Reyes’s shuttle arrived. He emerged unshackled, a little ruffled, but unhurt, escorted by Kandros.

“Where’s the rest of the crew getting exiled with you?” she asked, falling into step with them.

“Luhana and her people will be following along in a few days. They expedited my paperwork to appease Keema. You look beautiful, _amor_ ,” he purred, too self-satisfied for a man who had nearly caused an interstellar war a few hours ago.

She drained the rest of the coffee Avery had given her and chucked the cup in the next waste receptacle they passed. “Do not attempt to butter me up, Reyes. It won’t work.”

“He’s already outfitted with a monitor chip. All you have to do is activate it when you’re ready. Kesh had perimeter pins delivered to the _Tempest_ an hour ago with instructions,” Kandros informed her gruffly. “Don’t put them somewhere they can easily be tampered with.”

“Oh please. I know all of his tricks better than anyone. He won’t be weaseling out of this one.”

Kandros walked them to the docks where the _Tempest_ had a reserved spot right up front. Violet promised not to go easy on him to appease the grumpy turian, then escorted Reyes aboard her ship. More than one of her crew tried to innocently lurk and eavesdrop.

“All right, you’re free to roam as you want. You know your way around.”  

He took a step toward her. “We need to talk.”

She took an equal step backward. “I’m honestly a little tired of talking. Make yourself at home, Reyes. I’ve got a ship to go fly.”

She ignored his wounded expression as she fled, heading for the bridge. They could have it out in a few minutes. She needed another cup of coffee and to collect her thoughts first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Story time: So I'm doing a new ME:A playthrough, and I just got my new character to Kadara and Reyes is being all suave and shit and I'm just like, "YOU GET NO LOVING THIS TIME!" but then I have no self control and have my character flirt with him anyway. WHY AM I LIKE THIS?


	5. Cockblocking Shitweasel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes and Violet finally quit putting off having a private conversation about their relationship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some fluff! You earned it.

The crew of the _Tempest_ had, at the very least, grown accustomed to Reyes’s presence. Gil helped him run repairs on the _Gambler_ after Meridian and he’d spent some time on and off the _Tempest_ while they were all grounded and healing after the battle. Most of them regarded him warily, but a few ventured olive branches of friendship.

Those branches, it became immediately apparent, had been retracted.

Violet abandoned him in the cargo hold, rightfully pissed, but rage giving way to exhaustion. He checked around for allies. The crew had assembled to watch his walk of shame on board, but as soon as the Pathfinder made it clear they wouldn’t get a show, they disappeared. Even Jaal, and Jaal pretty much liked everybody.

He felt the strings of tiredness tug at his own body. The arrest seemed like a lifetime ago, rather than a day. Nevertheless, he hadn’t slept, too busy planning what instructions to give his people to keep Kadara running smoothly in case he did find himself incarcerated long term, how to get messages to Keema, what to tell her to keep the illusion that the Charlatan still ran the show. He’d built about a dozen apologies to Violet in his head, delivering exactly none of them.

He made his way up to the galley where he dumped the dregs of a cold pot of coffee and started a new one. Violet, a consummate addict, might mellow at least a little if she had a fresh cup in her hand on their next round of arguing.

_“Welcome back, Reyes.”_

He panel next to the narrow booth lit up with SAM’s presence. Reyes relaxed. The AI liked him on the basis that Violet’s brain chemistry reacted positively to him. Their interactions reduced stress and flooded her with endorphins--even before they began sleeping together.

“SAM, it’s been too long. How are you, old friend?”

Reyes always treated SAM pleasantly and respectfully. He was a constant presence in Violet’s head, even if he went quiet during their intimate moments. He was pretty sure the AI could put together a blistering blackmail packet from his data logs if he ever got on his bad side.

_“I am quite well, thank you.”_

SAM didn’t prompt further conversation, giving Reyes pause. Was even the AI giving him the cold shoulder?

The coffee pot gurgled for a few minutes.

“Hey, SAM?”

_“Yes, Reyes?”_

Cordial, but then again, SAM’s tone never changed. Emotional inflections had to be inferred.

“Have I been banned from any areas of the ship?”

_“No, Reyes. Should you have been?”_

He wasn’t positive, but he thought SAM might be teasing him. “Just wasn’t sure if her quarters were open to me. I’m going to go lie down.”

_“But you just made a pot of coffee.”_

“Not for me.”

The Pathfinder quarters were a vast, sprawling space, the only room on the _Tempest_ that could be described as such. The only thing they didn’t contain was a private bathroom, which he knew Violet wanted amended. The rest of the crew lived on top of each other unless they claimed corners of the ship other than the crew quarters. On the left end of the room stood the bed and closet. On the right, couches, chairs, a computer bank, SAM’s terminal, and the rodent she fondly referred to as Steve. He didn’t know where the pyjak they had on board got off to, and probably for the better. He hated that thing.

The highlight of the room, of course, had to be the dominant wall facing outward. It wasn’t a proper window, but a projection, usually showing whatever space they occupied, although right now she had a loop of Meridian running across it. He studied the planet they fought for, the place were the human ark had landed, giving them no choice but to claim it. It contained vast remnant structures that would take generations to map and study, but, at least in the hemisphere where the _Hyperion_ landed, had a temperate climate sustaining blossoming forests and lakes. A bit more average rainfall than he preferred, but not enough to discourage humans from settling.

Lowering down on the corner of the bed, he unlaced his boots and unzipped his jacket. He’d foregone the flight suit for a more innocuous look during the operation. Now, he dumped most of it onto the floor before stretching out on the embracing mattress. The lights in the room automatically dimmed.

He got part of a nap in before the doors whisked open and Violet trudged in. He kept his eyes closed. If she realized he was awake they would argue. He didn’t have it in him.

She sighed heavily, dropping her own jacket across the back of a chair and sitting for a few minutes at the computer, clicking through screens and scrubbing her hand through her long, dark hair. She refilled Steve’s food canister and kicked off her shoes, finally going to stand in front of the screen projection to study Meridian.

Probably a good sign. They had some quality memories on Meridian, despite the fight for their lives there.

Reyes finally sat up, shedding his ruse, plodding over to the living space where she stood and slipping his arms around her middle from behind, resting his chin on her shoulder. They nearly stood equal in height, except when she wore full battle gear and her boots gave her an extra couple of inches. He loved her tall, powerful body, every inch toned, with legs that wouldn’t quit. She smelled faintly of vanilla and citrus. She must have changed up her body wash.

Sighing, she relaxed back into his hold, arms closing over his where they held her. After hearing the words “deal breaker” exit her lips a few hours ago, he wasn’t sure if he would ever be allowed this again. Even now, he knew he wasn’t in the clear just yet. Their relationship teetered on the edge of chaos, something he had to take full responsibility for.

He set his lips on the juncture of her neck and shoulder, pressing close to feel the shudder that worked its way down her spine.

“I need you to answer a question,” she said.

He slumped, his plans of distracting her for the next hour and a half so she couldn’t talk evaporating, but this was his shitshow. He had to fix it.

“Anything, Violet.”

“Why didn’t you call me about the drug cartel?”

He dropped his arms away from her and put in a retreat, easing down onto one of her white, Initiative issue couches and leaning back with half-lidded eyes. “Because I can’t go tattle to my girlfriend every time I have a problem. I’ve lost good people going after his business. When he goes down, I want to be the one responsible. In his last moments, I want to reflect on how I out-maneuvered him, how he played the Charlatan’s game and he lost. I want to be smarter and better than him.”

“You always were vain,” she snorted, dropping onto the couch next to him, drawing one leg up underneath her and claiming a hand to fidget with his fingers.

Scowling, he turned his face away. “I suppose now that you know, you’ll take care of it.”

“That’s the plan. Besides, with you on house arrest, what else can you do?”

Instead of rising to the bait to complain about her arrangement for him, he tightened his fingers around hers and turned back to meet her dark brown eyes. “This cartel is dangerous, _amor_. You’re the strongest person I know, but that doesn’t make you invincible. Please, be careful.”

A little, amused smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Okay.”

“I’m serious, Violet.”

“I know.”

She drove him crazy. Sometimes in the good way, but mostly in the way that frequently robbed him of sleep or distracted him when he was supposed to be focused on other business. Her job constantly put her body and life on the line. He couldn’t tell her to quit, so instead, he worried. Violet had crawled under his skin and made her home in his heart and his mind. That only occasionally worked to his advantage.

“You’re not the only one worried here. I asked Kandros how he knew to arrest you. He said he got an anonymous tip. Somebody sold you out.”

Reyes laughed with a small shake of his head. “You say that like I might not have already puzzled it out for myself.”

Her gaze turned to sarcasm, but she said, “I’m having Drack look into it.”

“Oh, perfect. Drack loves me. I’m sure it’ll get solved in no time.”

She smacked him lightly. “He’s doing it for me, not for you.”

“I always assumed the only thing he would help you with regarding me is buying my body.”

She spluttered a laugh into her hand. “I mean, you’re not wrong. He told me as much earlier.”

“See?”

“After he told me to break up with you.”

His stomach twisted into a knot. “Yeah? And how are you feeling about that?”

“Drugs and guns, Vidal. Not to mention Keema threatening Ditaeon!”

“Hey, I didn’t know she was going to do that, and I bet Christmas Tate is pissed. We spent a lot of time and effort building trust with that outpost. I actually wished she hadn’t,” he confessed honestly. While he appreciated Keema’s unwillingness to fuck around with his freedom, they would likely be paying for the ramifications of her actions for ages. If the Initiative settlers couldn’t trust Kadara Port not to turn on them at the drop of a hat, they would take their trade elsewhere and leave his economy to suffer.

She seemed to mellow, but only a little. Never one to back down from a challenge, his _amor_. “I’ve come to your defense more times than I can count. I’ve taken a lot of hits, argued relentlessly with friends, colleagues, everyone on your behalf. Something like this can’t happen again.”

He knew. He recalled Tann’s tone as he ordered her up to his office earlier, the faces of the people around her as his secrets came unveiled. She protected him when he killed Sloane and took over Kadara Port, even burning a few friendships with the people she worked with by refusing to name him. And she hadn’t done it out of love or loyalty. Not back then. He wouldn’t have put it past her to shoot him during that period if she saw him on the street.

He bowed his head, eyes lowered. “Tann give you a hard time?”

“I can handle Tann.”

His lips curled upward. “I know.”

Leaning forward, she jabbed her index finger into the middle of his chest, voice low and threatening. “Now don’t you ever bring drugs onto my turf ever again.”

Part of him reacted to the authority in her voice, jerking a nod out of him. It was the part of him that spent twelve years in the Alliance, responding to commanding officers. The rest of him responded to her voice in a different way, stirring with familiar, lascivious interest he experienced every time she was worked up and in arm’s reach.

Well aware of the treacherous waters he navigated, he played dirty now that she had gotten everything out, needing an advantage to flip at least some of the power back to his hands. She first permitted an embrace, melting tiredly against his shoulder as he pulled her in. He deftly buried his fingers in her thick hair, nails scraping over her scalp, and felt the rest of her tension melt away. He took advantage of her lolling head to press a kiss on her neck and the barest tease of his tongue. She fell apart entirely, her exhale stirring against his ear.

“Let me make it up to you,” he purred, peeling her thin sweater up her body over her head.

When she tried to protest, he stuck his hands back in her hair, combing it back. With her eyes hooded and her lips parted, he claimed a quick kiss. She tasted like coffee, but she _always_ tasted like coffee.

Her compliance only lasted a moment longer when she came back to herself and pushed him back, hair tossed over one shoulder. She straddled his lap and leaned in for a conquering kiss. Their control ruptured, not that they had much to brag about to begin with, her pulse hammering against his where their skin connected. Her cloying scent surrounded him, stirring awake that part of him that _wanted_ , a colliding of passions like oxygen to a flame.

He’d just been ready to unhook her bra when the doors to her quarters whisked open. Her twin brother loped into the room with no regard to their privacy or current couch entanglement, crossing over to the closet beyond her bed.

“Hey, Reyes,” Avery called absently over his shoulder.

“Kind of in the middle of something here, _amigo_.”

He got into the closet and started pawing through the unorganized chaos within. “Well, tell your girlfriend to stop stealing my shit. Hey! When did you take my headphones, Vi?”

She let out a shallow groan, shoving her hair back and sliding off the side of Reyes’s lap. “What are you looking for?”

“You have my Kessler.”

“Not in my closet. It’s probably up in the armory with the rest of the guns.”

“Checked the armory. Is this my t-shirt?”

She peeked across the back of the couch toward him. “It’s Reyes’s.”

He unfolded the shirt so she could see the logo on the front for a Krogan death metal band. “Reyes is into Harshcords?”

“Your brother is annoying me.” He leaned down to place a kiss just above her navel.

“Avery, I’m trying to get laid!” she called in a singsong voice.

“I didn’t figure you two would make up this fast. Keep arguing about drugs or whatever.”

He murmured against the skin of her ribs, “I can put him _back_ into a coma.”

Violet cocked her head and seemed to consider it.

SAM’s console flickered. _“Pathfinder, since you are not getting intimate, Cora would like a word.”_

“No,” he groaned, pressing his forehead into her. “Yell at them in your scary Pathfinder voice.”

“I’ve been looking for this! You had it this whole time?” Avery said triumphantly, tucking something into his pocket.

 _“Avery, is Reyes still alive?”_ Peebee asked over comms, using an unsecured line so it transmitted over wall mics.

“So far.”

_“Damn. I knew I shouldn’t have bet against Vetra…”_

Reyes sat back in defeat while Violet fished her shirt off the floor and tossed it over her head. “Avery, get out of my closet! Cora, I’m on my way. What’s up?”

From the closet, her big, dumb brother straightened up triumphantly, toting a handgun. “Aha! I knew you took it, Vi!” But when he turned around, Violet had already gone to talk to Cora, leaving him alone with Reyes.

“You cockblocking little shitweasel.”

He grinned lopsidedly on his way out the door.

Usually, Reyes liked Violet’s twin. He was amicable and easygoing, a nice contrast to his volatile, highly caffeinated counterpart. He tried to make the point of staying on Avery’s good side, because where Violet was tall, her brother was massive, and Reyes had been on the receiving end of his fists once before. He didn’t relish the opportunity for a rematch, especially since Avery had been freshly out of a coma at the time and not up to his full, bullish strength.

He dropped back onto the couch, alone in the room once again. “Hey, SAM.”

The AI’s node next to the computer bank glowed a little brighter. _“Yes, Reyes?”_

“Did Avery orchestrate that interruption to settle bets with the crew on whether she’d murdered me or not?”

There was a significant lag before he replied. _“Well…”_

He supposed he deserved that, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected. The crew had used his relationship with Violet for their gambling entertainment since the beginning.

“Tell Violet that we need to start remembering to lock the doors again.”

_“I can set up reminder alarms for when you two begin engaging in intimacy.”_

“Better do it. I’m already on thin ice with her. She probably wouldn’t forgive me for killing her brother the next time he barges in.”


	6. Lie Until It's Better

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet gets Reyes set up for his house arrest and pays a diplomatic visit to Keema.

The first time Violet stepped foot on Kadara, she resolved never to return. Its rank, oily air permeated everything and left crusts of sulfur wherever she turned. The people were the Initiative’s exiles, pulled together by the ruthless despot to lead them in their revolt, Sloane Kelly, and not even getting hit on by a charming smuggler in a seedy bar could lift her opinion of the place. 

The planet had different ideas, despite her intentions. Reyes pulled her back. She thought she finally cut herself free of its orbit for good after he came out as the Charlatan and she’d sulked away, embarrassed and angry at his betrayal. She made Avitus Rix take her place as their liaison to the Initiative. Whenever Kadara needed a pathfinder, they were welcome to call on anyone but her. Much to her dismay, she was far from done with the planet. She and Reyes made up, and while she decided it wise to maintain a professional distance, she still made visits for booty calls. At the very least, she hadn’t run an actual mission in the badlands in over a year. 

“I’m ready for this place to stop smelling like Liam after hot burrito night,” she sighed grievously on the ramp leading down from the  _ Tempest _ .

“Hey,” the young man objected, only a few paces behind her in the cargo hold. 

Reyes sulked just to her left, still pouting from their interrupted hookup. She probably could have found time while they were in FTL, but she was still punishing him a bit for dragging them all into this. Her ears were still rang from Tann chewing her out in his office. Reyes could suffer a little longer. 

Vetra hauled a crate down the ramp. “Still shacked up in the slums, Vidal?” she asked, loading the crate onto a little trolley. It contained the tech they needed to secure his home for the duration of his arrest. Liam jogged down the ramp to join them. 

“I am,” he confirmed. To Violet, he fixed her with pleading, molten caramel eyes. “Can you give me a few hours to wrap some things up?” 

Her smile couldn’t be construed as anything resembling pleasant. “Fuck no. Let’s go.” 

“You torture me,  _ hermosa _ .” 

“You earned it.” 

He frowned. “Lead on, Pathfinder. You know the way.”

They took the lift down to the underbelly of the city. Violet begged him to relocate out of the slums, but he outright refused. He wasn’t the Charlatan, not to anybody but her crew and his inner circle. To the larger population, he was Reyes Vidal, smuggler, charmer, and all around scalawag. And while his reputation indicated a certain success rate, he knew better than to live above his means. That was the excuse, at least. Violet knew better. Reyes loved the slums, in his own way. They were home, no matter how unfathomable she found his reasoning. 

He had, at least, moved out of his tuna can-sized apartment into a something with more space than a matchbox. The complex he lived in when they first got together had been rightfully condemned, demolished, and rebuilt into cheap housing for the other gutter rats that refused or couldn’t afford to move topside. The new apartment he took up residence in had been built on its bones. He claimed a unit on the uppermost floor to overlook the Kadaran landscape. The entirety of his apartment still looked like it cost less than the boots on her feet, but it at least had a bedroom she couldn’t touch the opposing walls of with her arms outstretched and a kitchen big enough for a proper coffee pot on the counter.

“Six months is going to be a long time. What am I supposed to do trapped in there?” he asked as they marched past the shipping containers that may or may not have also contained “rent free” housing for some of the less discriminating locals. 

“Read some books? Watch some vids? Learn to knit? I don’t care, as long as it’s not selling drugs.” 

“You’re never shaking this one, mate,” Liam muttered with a grimace. 

“I’m going to get fat, sitting on my ass all day doing nothing.”

She smirked. “I’ll get you a treadmill. Not that I’d mind. You’d look cute with a little pudge.” 

She didn’t look over to see his expression, but he radiated displeasure. Reyes’s vanity made for a cheap target, but she was done playing nice just now. 

They reached his apartment without difficulty. Reyes stood outside the doorstep, jaw working with consternation, the first flicker of defiance lighting his eyes. Recognizing that the last few days weren’t his finest, she eased up on her barbs and slid an arm around his waist. Toting the crate of tech, Vetra and Liam slid by to get set up, but Violet lingered to coax him across the threshold. 

“You’ll run your business from inside, do your time, and be back in the air before you know it. It’s honestly the best deal you could have gotten. And just think. All of the smuggling jobs you’ll have to outsource will bolster your economy.” 

“Not  _ that _ much, and it robs me of my cut,” he grumbled. 

“I think you’ll still make your rent.”

“Will you stay a few days? Help me settle in?” If he meant it to sound suave, it nevertheless came out wounded and pathetic. 

“I’ve got a drug cartel to topple here. I’m going to have to sleep somewhere.” 

That seemed to perk him. “We haven’t done anything remotely close to cohabitating since right after Meridian.”

Except for that small reprieve, Violet’s job demanded her time with singular relentlessness. She hadn’t even taken a vacation since waking from cryo. The only breaks she got were when she was too busted up to go out and Lexi chained her to the med bay. While she would technically be working, she doubted she would rustle up and eliminate the drug cartel overnight. 

“It would be nice to have you to myself for a few days. I get tired of phone sex,” he confessed, placing dizzying kisses up the curve of her neck.

She didn’t push him off immediately, even with Vetra and Liam running around the apartment a stone’s throw away. Reyes had a way of stealing her breath and stopping her heart with a few light touches and a word or two spoken in his alluring accent. 

“We’re done in here,” Vetra announced. “You just have to key his chip and you’re good to go.” 

Violet pried herself away and gestured for him to enter the apartment. He grimaced slightly, but finally stepped inside. Using her scanner, she had SAM activate the subdermal chip they had implanted beneath his ear. He tested the boundary, getting a light warning zap by the new perimeter defences. While he tested his boundary, she had SAM scan and implant his own little virus in his home security system.

“What if the building catches on fire?” he asked blandly. 

Liam clapped his shoulder. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Closing her scanner, she leaned forward and pecked his cheek. “I’ve got to go smooth some feathers between Keema and Christmas Tate, but we need to talk about this drug cartel and what you’ve gathered on them so far. Dinner later?” 

He spread his arms with mocking graciousness. “I’ll be here.”

Flicking him a small, apologetic smile, she followed the other two out and shut him inside to start his confinement, sending off a message to the Nexus to confirm that he had complied with protocol and the tech set up in his his house would beam regular updates to confirm his status inside. She had little doubt that he would begin immediately attempting to tamper with the system, but that was a battle for a different day. 

“Hey, Vetra. What  _ does _ happen if his apartment catches on fire?” 

“Smoke automatically disables the containment field, as well as a cachet of other toxic chemicals humans can’t breathe. I was supposed to let him know he can evacuate in case of an accident, but I thought he would enjoy figuring that out more on his own.”

She snorted and shook her head. 

“The sensors report potential accidents, so if he does use smoke as a workaround, they’ll know, and have to send someone out to check whether his apartment actually burnt down or if he’s out roaming thinking he outsmarted the system,” Vetra added behind a laugh. 

Violet debated whether to warn him, but decided Vetra had a point. Reyes would have more fun working it out for himself. He needed something to alleviate the impending boredom.

They took the lift back up to the main part of the city, the part of the city that at least contained a glimmer of respectability, unlike the slums underneath. The crowd was as rough as it had ever been, but at least the houses weren't crumbling and the streets were clear of litter, drunks, and sulfur pools. 

The Kadarans, mostly exiles from the Nexus and world-weary angarans, stopped to watch them pass wherever they went. Vetra might have been able to blend in if she wanted, but Liam was an ex-cop and pinpointed as authority no matter how hard he tried, and Violet didn't bother attempting to blend. She was the human Pathfinder. Her posture alone usually kept anyone from testing whether she was worth the hype.

They passed the outskirts of the sprawling market, made up of hundreds of stands and thousands of goods. Since the Initiative had no authority in Kadara Port, she ignored the illegality of most of the wares, although more than one stand owner watched her defiantly, daring her to take objection. As long as there weren't heads piked at the gates of the city like during Sloane's reign, Violet didn't give a damn what they did.

Keema had taken over Sloane Kelly’s HQ after the turnover of power. The building had once been a government office, although she had a tough time imagining the den of outlaws operating under a normal, judicial system. The guards out front knew her on sight and welcomed her by name, calling ahead to let Keema know she was on her way in.

Violet had only met the angaran leader a handful of times, since Avitus mostly dealt with Kadara's politics. He would have been better suited to act as a bridge between her and Christmas Tate, having cultivated good relationships with both of them, but she was confident in her ability to settle matters.

During Sloane's reign of tyranny, she set up what could only be described as a throne room. After a transition period, Keema closed the throne room except for social events and moved her operations to an office on the east side of the building. 

Liam and Vetra loitered while Violet let herself into the office. 

“Ah, Pathfinder Ryder. Welcome. It's been too long,” Keema said earnestly, rising from her desk. She was tall and slender, even for an angaran, with wide features and lovely violet skin.

They used the angaran greeting, touching the backs of their forearms. Then, for one brief moment, Violet swore Keema debated hugging her. It wouldn't have come as a surprise. Angarans were a touchy lot, especially around family. If she considered Reyes family, Violet could see her extending that sentiment to a committed partner. 

“It's good to see you, Keema.” They both settled into chairs. Keema went for comfort over style, a trait Violet wished Nexus brass would adopt.

“And you, Pathfinder.” The window at her back bathed her in golden light from the Kadaran sun.” Let me begin by apologizing. Had I known you were personally overseeing Reyes’s predicament on the Nexus, I would have demonstrated more restraint. I'm afraid I reacted without thought. I was afraid they would attempt to leverage him against me the moment they found out he was the Charlatan…” She flushed indigo, head ducking. “I'm accustomed to getting my way with shows of force here on Kadara, not diplomacy.”

Violet made a noise. Like the Initiative leaders were any better? She often felt like a loaded gun they aimed at anyone who threatened their vision. 

“I'm going to talk to Tate when we're through here and reassure him that you were bluffing, that you know you were out of line, and it will never happen again. I hope your publicists are preparing a formal apology?” 

She studied the knick-knacks occupying the perimeter space on the desk. It appeared Keema had a fondness for shells. One portrait on the north facing wall depicted an oceanscape on what appeared to be Havarl.

Keema grimaced delicately. “I appreciate your intervention, but...I wasn't bluffing. Reyes is family. I was not about to let them take him.”

Angarans didn't always act rationally when their families were under threat. With someone like Keema, who didn't have the sprawling, extended family that most of her kind surrounded themselves with, she would have imprinted that instinct on the people closest to her.

Leaning forward, she made sure to meet Keema’s starfield eyes. “Reyes tells me you're the best liar among the angarans he's met. If there's any time to use that skill, it's now. Lie to Tate, tell him what he needs to hear, and fix things with the outpost.”

Violet didn't particularly enjoy the web of deceit spinning around Kadara Port and its people, but Reyes built everything on fabrications. Keema herself was a figurehead, a puppet delivering Reyes’s words through a more appealing mouth. There was a reason she preferred to stay out of their politics. She loved Reyes, but not the way he conducted his empire.

Keema fluttered a sigh, stilling her hands on top of her desk. “That, I can do.”

Her mouth twisted wryly. She may not like the way Kadara ran it's business, but she did appreciate it's simplicity on occasion. The advice to “lie until it's better” wouldn't have flown so gracefully delivered to the directors of the Initiative. They'd have treated her like a lunatic. Idealism had its place, but Violet was more interested in results.

“Next time, Keema, please call me first. Or at the very least call Avitus. We want this arrangement to work as much as you do.”

She nodded graciously.

Satisfied, she turned the conversation to her other priority. “Now, tell me about this oblivion drug ring. Reyes wanted to sell cheap drugs on the Nexus to shitcan their profits. That's not an option, so I'm going after them myself. I need to know everything you know.”

Keema hesitated before answering, gathering her thoughts. “They're dangerous,” she began slowly. 

“What's the fun if they're not?” She hoped to lighten the mood, to put Keema at enough ease to talk freely. 

Instead, the woman's face darkened. “He doesn't like putting you in danger. He wants to outsmart them and avoid open bloodshed.”

“Reyes isn't calling the shots anymore. He's been benched. It's my game now.”

A muscle ticked in her jaw, but she relented. “They call themselves the Hunt. It started with oblivion, but it's grown. They're well funded. Too well funded to only be dealing. They have stashes all over the badlands protected by Remnant and mercenaries. We've found a few. It costs us more going after them than for them to protect it. We haven't found any paths that lead to their leadership.”

“Hold the phone, did you say  _ Remnant _ ?” She almost threw her hands in the air, her temper rekindling. “Why didn't you call me? I'm the Remtech queen!”

“Reyes sent out his best to deal with this. Only a few came back. He planned only on pulling you in if he could weaken the Hunt first.”

“He's playing the long game,” she sighed, massaging her temples. 

Reyes didn't solve problems overnight the way she did. He worked through them, slowly, slyly. He set down traps ten steps in advance and waited for his prey to fall into them. He was endlessly patient, a methodical hunter. It was the biggest difference between them. Violet came at her problems head-on. Reyes came at them sideways.

“The Hunt are strong and they want Kadara. We think they're in our city, turning ears, gaining sympathizers.”

“What do they want? I mean, big picture. What's the end goal?”

“We aren't sure. They aren't making demands, only taking power.”

“I'm sure you've captured someone playing for their team, and I'm sure you aren't squeamish about...extracting information.”

She once told Reyes that, as far as Charlatan business went, there were things he wouldn't want to tell her and things she didn't want to hear. She made her peace with that back then, especially because his plans for Kadara's future included self-governance and laws. She had to let him get there his own way.

Keema teetered a hand in the air. “They seem to have taken inspiration from the Collective, their structure broken into isolated cells. We can’t find anyone with any real knowledge.”

“Can you send me all the information you have on them? Names. Locations. Whatever's in your dossier.”

She inclined her head. 

Violet stood, already itching for a cup of coffee to get her through the afternoon. “Thanks, Keema. I'm headed out immediately to talk to Tate. I'll get him agree to speak with you soon.”

“I'll work on my most earnest apology. Oh, and Violet.”

She paused. Keema had never used her first name. She wondered what that meant.

“Don't be too cross with Reyes. He is devoted to you. I would feel terrible for my misstep to make you postpone the wedding.”

Violet hated when the angarans talked about her wedding like it was something being actively planned. Jaal did the same thing. Instead if protesting, she only nodded her head and evacuated the office. 

While she was pretty well entrenched in her feelings for Reyes, she didn't want to marry him. They always knew their relationship would get harder before it got any easier. She had to make sure she got over her occasional impulse to shoot him before she even considered any sort of vows, much less ones that included permanence. 


	7. The Brains of the Operation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet goes hunting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first order of business, somebody made me art of Reyes and Violet and I am SOBBING it's so beautiful. Feast upon it and weep as I have. https://ericaangelaart.tumblr.com/image/170301744855
> 
> Second order of business, I have had both a death in the family and a birth in the family over the last two and a half weeks. Writing and posting has slowed up a bit for obvious reasons. Life is wild, guys. 
> 
> Okay. Go.

Hoping for at least a small veneer of respectability, Violet brought Cora and Vetra with her on the jaunt out to Ditaeon, Cora for her staunch, straight-laced reputation, and Vetra for her people-handling skills. They loaded into the Nomad just outside the city gates, well within view of Reyes’s apartment window. She could feel his eyes prickle her while she got to head out on adventure, leaving him trapped behind. 

“Everybody get their bets in for how long Reyes will last before he dismantles the system?” Vetra asked as they strapped in. 

Violet perked as she floored the accelerator. “Ooh, I get to be part of this one!” Normally, the bets were about her and they didn’t want her to weigh the outcome. “Tuesday. I give it until Tuesday.” She shifted up as the Nomad gained speed, grateful for the road maintenance that had begun to spring up around Kadara Port. Reyes was big on improving infrastructure. 

_ “Um...Ryder, it’s Sunday today,”  _ Suvi pointed out, her voice filtering through the mic on the dash. 

“Don’t tell me anyone went over a week. He’ll be flattered you all have so much faith in him.”

_ “Bets are made. There’s no turning back now,”  _ Peebee chimed. 

“You bet less than a week, didn’t you?”

_ “Five days.” _

She took the road headed west around the mountains, admiring the former, sulfuric pools and their newfound clarity. Kadara had a rugged beauty about it. If it didn’t smell half as bad, she would probably like it more than the others. Voel was too icy, Elaaden too icy, and Eos had been jokingly nicknamed New Utah by humans familiar with earth geography. 

Honestly, she liked Meridian the best out of all that they found. It felt the closest thing to a home, and not just because the  _ Hyperion _ crashed there, but Reyes had gotten a funny look when she mentioned putting down roots there. She wanted a house on a lake, somewhere peaceful and quiet and remote. He pointed out that there were lakes on Kadara. She let the topic drop after that because she wasn’t committed to the idea of settling anywhere just yet. It could be an argument reserved for another time. 

They skidded into Ditaeon in record time, beating her personal best by almost a full minute and a half. Back on the  _ Tempest _ , she was certain money exchanged hands. Her crew had a serious gambling problem.

The outpost had grown since its humble roots. Prefab housing sprawled across the rugged campus, more than just a smattering of labs and administration buildings, but family homes, some with multiple units tacked on, almost like in anticipation of growing families. The original units made up the heart of the town and spread out in a grid pattern with dirt roads connecting everything. A few little gardens peeked out between houses, and more than one contained window boxes. Touches of creativity and artistry turned Ditaeon into something inviting, livable. A wind chime made of eiroch claws and obsidian. A mural of a pack of rylkor painted on the side of a trade shop. A handmade doormat professing greetings in six different languages, including Shalesh. 

She led the way to the main administration building where Ditaeon’s small leadership worked out of. She walked in on a high-energy meeting, where Tate and some of the others stood around maps of the outpost and surrounding areas and argued about budgets and security. They didn't notice her at first, busy bickering over shifting money to pay for stronger defense systems.

“Don't blow your budget just yet,” Violet advised when they all paused to search through account information on their datapads. 

Christmas Tate hesitated before recognition set in. “Pathfinder Ryder. It's been a while.”

She'd been present for Ditaeon’s foundation and nothing more after witnessing the outpost bought and paid for with blood. Reyes’s “gift” to her to start a new relationship with the Initiative directly after Sloane's murder and taking over Kadara Port. The whole business put a bad taste in her mouth.

“We need to talk,” she said, jerking her chin toward his office. 

“Where’s Avitus?” 

“They sent me to deal with this one.” 

He frowned, dark eyes holding her levelly for a moment before nodding to his staff. “We’ll pick this up after lunch.” 

He led the way to his back office, which, unlike Keema’s pristine space, drowned under clutter and data pads. She couldn’t spot a single clean surface, including the chairs, so she opted to stand. It looked like a hurricane blew through, although the piles at least seemed to have some semblance of methodology. The doors whisked shut behind them, blocking out the grumbles from the other room as they picked up their things to disperse, with Vetra and Cora playing damage control to soothe nerves.

“You mind telling me what the hell happened, Ryder?” He tried to loom, jaw tight, eyes hard, but he didn’t have very many inches on her and she’d begun to master a posture that bullied others into backing down, whether they realized it or not. She’d learned it from Drack. 

“Look, Keema is sorry. She knows what she did was--”

“Sorry?” he exploded, cutting her off. “She pointed missiles at my outpost! Miners and scientists and traders!  A civilian operation! We can hold our own against the criminals, but if our own allies turn on us, we don’t stand a chance!” 

“She knows. Addison was firm about putting down sanctions if an event--”

“Like this ever happens again?” Again, he cut her off. “This can’t happen a second time. If we can’t trust Kadara Port, we may as well pick up and leave. They cannot hold us hostage every time they get pissy with the Initiative! I won’t stand for it. This is not how this relationship can work.”

She nodded demurely. “I know.”

He stabbed his finger toward the ground. “You know who I want an apology from? The Charlatan. I know Keema is their puppet. She’s slick, but she takes orders from somebody above her head, and I know they orchestrated this event, not her. She can keep her apology.” 

Violet’s mouth twisted wryly. “The Charlatan is...contrite.” 

“Yeah, that’ll be the fucking day,” he snorted doubtfully. “They can stand here and deliver the apology, not that I’d believe them. I thought we had a good relationship with the Collective, but it turns out, we’re expendable.” 

“Not as expendable as you think. The Charlatan needs cooperation with the Initiative more than you know.” 

“What happened, anyway? What spooked them so much that our lives were suddenly deemed unimportant?” 

“They were never deemed unimportant. It was a bluff.”

That seemed to rile him up again. “Oh, great, so they only  _ pretended  _ to point missiles at us and sent my entire outpost into a panic!” 

Her molars ached from clenching them. “And they’ve been told that it was an unacceptable move and there will be real consequences. The Charlatan is first on Tann and Addison’s shitlist and Keema is scrambling for damage control. Kadara Port doesn’t want to lose its alliance with the Initiative and this misstep puts them in danger of that. One more toe out of line and sanctions come down.”

Christmas Tate’s bluster calmed a fraction, but only a fraction. “I’m not going to play around with the lives of the hundreds of people who took the risk coming here. We can handle kett and outlaws, but the Port is too powerful. I can’t risk them turning on us.” 

“They won’t. Something like this will never happen again.” 

Or there would be hell to pay. Violet wouldn’t just join Tann and Addison on the warpath. She would lead them. 

“Contrite,” he scoffed, scraping a hand over the back of his neck. “You sure about that? I may not know who it is, but the Charlatan doesn’t sound like the type to be contrite about anything.” 

“I personally gave them an earful. They’re currently bearing their own punishment, but I can’t tell you what it is. They’re going to hurting for a while over all of the stunts that led to this shitshow.”

“You can guarantee that?” 

“I can.” She held his gaze levelly until he looked away. 

They coordinated for an official visit from Keema where she would deliver her apology in person and placate any other nerves and listen to the outpost’s grievances over being used as blackmail fodder. Violet had no doubt that Keema was up for the task. Angarans had a way of coming off as painfully earnest. It often worked to their advantage in matters of diplomacy, Keema moreso because she was a better liar than the majority of her race, so nobody suspected any subterfuge.

Finally, after that settled, Violet said, “There’s another matter I’m attending before I leave Kadara. There’s been an issue with a drug cartel I’ve been asked to look into and dismantle. They call themselves the Hunt, but I don’t have a whole lot of information other than they deal in oblivion, they have a way of smuggling it aboard the Nexus to sell, and they run their operations somewhere out of the badlands.” 

His expression fell back into a glower. “We’ve been having problems with drugs. I keep plugging holes in our security trying to keep them out, but they always seem to weasel back in. I don’t have a big population of users, but I have suspicions that some here are helping move product. We do a lot of trade here, minerals, mostly, but more and more with different products constantly shifting through. It’s made it hard to pin down exactly where it’s coming in from or going to.”

“Mind if I dig around, see if I can flush out a suspect?” 

“Be my guest. I’ve been meaning to call Avitus in about it anyway.” After a moment of hesitation, he asked, “Why did they bring you in, not him? Not that I mind. You’re good at your job. Just, we don’t see much of your face on Kadara.” 

She cast him a terse smile. “Because I’m the only person who knows what buttons to push on the Charlatan to make them take this seriously.” 

“So you’re the Charlatan Whisperer?”

“Something like that.” Despite the amount of yelling she had done in the past day.

He raised his eyebrows. “Who is it?”

“That's classified.”

“That’s what Avitus always says.”

She almost wished she had been in a better mood when Reyes revealed his identity to her bosses to appreciate the looks of bewilderment on their faces. 

“How’d it go?” Cora asked as she stepped out of the office and collected them. 

She briefed them on her conversations with Tate as they headed down the street. Rain clouds built overhead, blotting out the sun. The remnant atmospheric scrubber at least made one thing better: Kadaran rain no longer contained acid. Clear H2O fell from the sky in fat droplets and nobody ran screaming for cover. Kadara had come a long way. 

Vetra glanced briefly skyward, then ignored the rain. “So what’s the plan?”

“We’re going to poke around the warehouses. If someone’s moving oblivion through, it’s probably disguised somewhere in the cargo. Let’s go see what we can dig up. Do you think you could go chat up the locals, Vee? Warehouse managers, workers, whatever. See if anyone knows anything.” 

Vetra was an acquisitions extraordinaire. She knew all of the channels, legit and otherwise, to get just about anything. Better yet, she could get people to talk to her. “You got it.” 

“Don’t worry, Cora. If we’re lucky, we’ll find you some drug dealers to punch.” 

“Looking forward to it, Ryder.” 

The warehouses occupied a vast lot on the northeast side of the settlement. She started scanning over cargo, searching for misregistered cargo or traces of oblivion. Given the amount of ground they had to cover, tedium descended fast.

“What’s our move if we don’t find anything here?” Cora asked, a few paces off, scanning through item manifests on a datapad. 

She pointed the scanner down an aisle that looked exactly the same as the last nine they marched down. “We have nav points to some of the stashes the Collective ran into trouble checking out. Reports state that Remnant were guarding them, as well as mercs.” 

“Remnant? How?” she gasped, gaze snapping up. 

“We aren’t the only ones who have fiddled to get it to work to our advantage. Peebee managed to scrub their directive matrixes, why not somebody else? Hell, even the Kett on Voeld were making progress on wrangling them before I put my boot through their sphincters.” 

She made a disgruntled noise. “I don’t like the idea of drug dealers wielding Remnant at us.” 

“You and me both.” 

They shared a terse look over the scanner, the implications sinking in. They had a long investigation ahead that could only end in gunfire and bloodshed. Pretty typical for them, but it never got any funner. Or easier. Both of them had clocked a high kill count since waking up in Heleus and neither was cavalier enough to brag about it.

“You think one of these worlds will shape up to have a nice beach we can go lay on at some point?” she wondered, turning her scanner back to the cargo.

“Sooner or later. How does Reyes feel about oceans?” 

She frowned. “I don’t know if I’ll ever pry him away from this place. He’s put too much of himself into it. But that doesn’t mean I can’t build my own beach house somewhere nice and sandy. Maybe fill it with a couple of muscular turians that will weigh on me hand and foot and hand-feed me grapes.” 

“I’m sure he’d have something to say about that.” 

“Probably jealous he can’t get muscular turians to hand-feed him grapes.”

Her comm buzzed before they could get too deep into the fantasy, Avery’s voice popping in.  _ “Hey, Ryder. Your boyfriend is trying to negotiate some changes.” _

“What now?” she grumbled. 

_ “Apparently he spent the morning buying out his neighbor’s apartments and now he wants us to expand his prison radius. I already talked to Addison and she doesn’t care as long as we log it and you sign off.”  _

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Go ahead. Do you need Vetra to brief you on using the tech?”

_ “Peebee said she could do it.” _

Peebee and Reyes occupying the same space sounded like a recipe for disaster. She wasn’t sure what they would blow up together, but something would end up in flames. “Fine, but go with her and make sure she doesn’t…” She wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. Peebee loved pushing buttons and breaking shit. “Just go with her.” 

_ “Gotcha.” _

Flicking her scanner back on, she delved back into the tedium. Following criminal trails and solving mysteries only sounded sexy in Salarian soap operas. In reality, it was a lot of sifting through garbage for the potential of a single clue that might or might not actually lead them anywhere. She’d rather shoot at something.

_ “Pathfinder, I'm picking up traces of oblivion,”  _ SAM announced near the end of the aisle. 

All that really gave them was evidence that the warehouse had, in fact, been used to move product, but SAM couldn't estimate how long ago or who might have been involved, so finding traces didn't give them much of a lead. She poked around the surrounding crates to get an idea of what the area usually stored for shipping.

“Ryder, I've got something!” 

Vetra’s voice seemed unusually smug, her subharmonics fluttering, as she shoved a sweaty, stuttering human toward them. He was young, younger than Violet, even, who usually caught shit for her age, even after nearly two years in Heleus. His unkempt hair plastered to his forehead and his lips trembled as he looked between them. Vetra encouraged him to take a knee in front of Violet with a blunt shove. He buckled like a day-old lamb.

“Caught him getting high in a back room. Thought he might have something to say.”

“I was on break! I was just relaxing.” And now he was tripping.

Violet crouched down, putting her under eye-level with the young man, noting the pupil dilation of his eyes and the way he clutched his work coveralls, sifting the fabric back and forth between his fingers. 

“What's your name?” she asked soothingly.

“J...Johann. Johann Murr.”

“Do you know who I am Johann?”

He bobbled his head frantically. “I've watched all your vids.”

Violet knew at least one of those vids showed her tearing a kett in half with her biotics. She'd been disgruntled to find it circulating at the time, but it did lend itself to her reputation. 

“Then you know I'm pretty good at getting what I want, Johann. Hey.” She snapped her fingers in front of his face when he seemed to be drifting. Even his sympathetic nervous system in full fight-or-flight couldn't chew past the oblivion swirling in his system. “You ever see a kett’s skull explode after I put my fist through it?” 

That got his attention. His eyes focused. “I just want to go home.”

“We'll take you home. I won't even report this. Everything that happens today stays between you and me.”

A glimmer of hope sparked in his face. “Really? You won't tell Yijun?”

“Nope.”

He broke into a fractured sob. “Nobody ever mentioned how nice you are.”

Both of her companions rolled their eyes, but knew better than to interrupt the interrogation. She was grateful the others weren't along to hear and wield his statement against her for the next six months.

“But you have to tell me some things in exchange. I've got to know about the oblivion. Where it's coming in from. Who's hustling it.”

He gasped. “I can't tell you that!” 

“Come on, Johann. I need you to level with me. I can't just walk away unless you tell me what I need to hear. I could go get Yi…” She glanced to Vetra.

“Yijun. Warehouse manager.”

“Yijun. We'll see if she knows anything,” Violet threatened.

He doubled over on his knees, dragging his fingers across his scalp and digging in. “I don't know anything.”

“You must know something.”

“I don't how we all get coordinated, just that we do.”

_ “Ryder, he's showing elevated stress markers. His heartbeat is one hundred and eighty beats per minute.” _

She didn't need the clinical diagnosis, but she didn't want to give the poor kid a heart attack. She could bring him in and work the system the long way, but he would be afforded a lawyer and she didn't actually want to charge him with anything, since being an idiot wasn't a crime. Maybe she'd put in a word with Dr. Nakamoto to get him into a detox program. 

“Johann. It's going to be okay, but I can't promise you anything until you give me a name. Where did you get the oblivion?” she pressed. 

“It was so stupid. So stupid. It was a game, you know. I didn't ask questions.”

“Who else, Johann? Just tell me and you get to go home and sleep it off.”

He continued to scratch his scalp, the scraping setting her teeth on edge. A little kindle of anger reignited in her gut. This was what Reyes wanted to bring onto the Nexus to distribute for peanuts?

“Come on, Johann. Time is wasting…”

He looked up, eyes blackened over by his pupils, and opened his mouth, seeming resigned. Before he could drop the name, half of his skull ripped apart, blowing toward Violet in a shower of red, pink, and white. The bullet and skull fragments hit her chest while brain and blood slapped her face, getting into her open mouth and nose, soaking into her hair and sliding down the collar of her armor.

She stared down at Johann, half of his face missing from the bullet’s explosive exit, including an eye. It took her a minute before her mind  conjured a single, hysterical thought. 

This wasn't how she wanted to get to the brains of the operation.


	8. A New Player Enters the Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All work and drenched in brain makes Violet an annoyed Pathfinder

Violet heard swearing and running as Vetra tore off after the gunman and Cora knelt down next to her, first, then Johann. Violet rolled into her hands and knees, spitting brain and blood and dry heaving against the rising bile in her gut. 

“SAM?” Cora barked. 

_ “She is unhurt.” _

“I'm fine.” Violet used a canteen to rinse her mouth, gagging a few more times. Usually when people died, she at least had her helmet on. She'd never personally tasted brain. “Oh, shit, Johann…” 

She wiped up around her mouth and nose. That taste would never leave.

Blinking against her watering eyes, she asked, “Vetra?”

_ “Lost the shooter. I'm on my way back. Johann?” _

She couldn't even look at his concave skull. “Didn’t make it.” Scraping to her knees, she said, “We need to round up all warehouse employees. If one’s missing, that's probably our shooter. If they're all accounted for, we'll go from there.” Violet rose shakily to her feet, scraping brain and skull off her chest piece. She leaned over her knees, breathing shallowly. 

Cora delicately picked brain out of her hair. 

She let her companions coordinate the assembly of all the workers while she disappeared into the nearest bathroom and scrubbed her face and washed remnants of Johann out of her hair. She met her dark eyes in the mirror above the sink, took a deep breath, and called Reyes. She needed to hear him.

_ “Miss me already?”  _ he crooned.

She hitched her hip against the sink. “It's shaping up to be a hell of a day. How'd your neighbors take being bought out?”

_ “The bonus to most Kadarans, they aren't sentimental about things. They took my offers and are already mostly moved out. I've got contractors coming by tomorrow to start knocking down walls.” _

He always took the effort to live within the means of his cover as a smuggler. She supposed a six month house arrest sentence changed his mind about appearances.

“What are you going to do with the space?”

_ “A gym in one. I haven't decided on the other. Maybe expand my home office. Mostly I want the space to pace.” _

She shook her head. “Maybe you can get a roommate, someone to keep you company.”

_ “You're the only roommate I'm interested in. So what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into already?” _

She picked a shard of skull out of her armored shoulder. “You know, the usual.”

_ “Shit, I hope not,” _ he breathed.  _ “I know what 'the usual’ means to you.” _

“It's fine. I should probably actually get back to it. I just needed a minute.”

_ “Will you be home tonight?” _

“I hope so.”

_ “I'll keep the coffee on.” _

A smile broke past her face. “Thanks, babe.”

_ “Go kill ‘em all. God will sort out the innocent.” _

She snorted. “Love you, too.”

Squaring herself up in the mirror, she took a steadying breath and marched out. SAM gave her directions to meet up with Cora and Vetra. The warehouse staff had been assembled into an empty storehouse with plenty of space for twenty-five people. They clustered together anxiously, whispers passing from group to group. A woman with tidy black hair and a pressed uniform stood with Cora and Vetra. Yijun, she assumed. Christmas Tate stormed in moments later. 

“Our shooter just stole a transport and flew off,” Vetra told her grimly, passing her a datapad. “Anlin Prett, a Salarian only six months out of cryo.”

Violet swept her gaze over the assembled workers, chewing over the weird facts she had been presented with so far. The faces staring back at her were stricken with awe and fear. She was well aware she hadn't been able to get all of the blood off. 

“Johann is dead,” she announced, spearing them all with her steely gaze. 

More than one choked out earnest cries of disbelief, but others flinched away guiltily. She mentally separated them from the rest of the group.

“Somebody shot him in the head.”

Eyes flickered down. She sensed regret, but not surprise. She narrowed down her quarry based on body language.

“In fact, I'm wearing his brains as we speak, and I, for one, am not enjoying it.” Her hollow, grim laugh filled the corners of the storeroom. She took a slow pace forward, closer to those who seemed shaken, but somehow off. “So here's what's going to happen. Either somebody enlightens me about what's going on, or I'm taking you one-by-one into interrogation and peeling it out of you the hard way. Because somebody knows something here. It's only a matter of time before one of you tells me.” She landed in front of a human man. She read humans better, and this one seemed on the verge of throwing up and hadn't looked directly at Violet once. 

The young man cringed away from her.

“Starting with you.”

Beside her, a turian woman jumped forward. “This has gone too far. Johan’s dead! Are we seriously going to go down protecting the Hunt?” 

“Dax, shut up!” another Turian hissed. 

Others burst out protests to silence her.

“No! This is stupid! It went too far when the H.M. put the hit on Johann. Fuck the consequences and fuck the reward!” She turned to Violet. “I'll tell you everything I know.”

More cries of objection. About half of the workers flew into an uproar. The others shrank back away from them, startled by the vehemence of their coworkers.

Violet singled out the turian. “Who are the Hunt? Who’s in charge of it?”

The woman’s mandibles flared, showing off rows of teeth, body tense. Despite the aggressive posture, she bowed her head submissively. “The Hunt aren't people. The Hunt is a game. And we don't know anything. I didn't even know who else was involved until just now. A few, maybe, but definitely not half the crew. We aren’t allowed to talk to each other about it.”

“Dax, you're going to get us all punished!”

“Next person who interrupts will get more than just punished,” Violet roared.

Silence fell, but panic remained. The stench of nervous sweat pouring off thirteen individuals from five species soured her nostrils.

Dax continued. “Punishment is part of the game. All instructions come from the Hunt Master, usually by email. Sometimes from others playing the game. All I know is the benefit usually outweighs the cost. The H.M. has blackmail. Sometimes we're in charge of gathering it on each other. But whatever the case, when instructions come down, there’s punishment for refusing and a reward for obeying. Usually, the punishment was a credit reduction or the reveal of blackmail. The reward, a huge credit bonus or drugs or tech upgrades. And it was easy at first. It started small. Quick cash. Do a small task and earn twenty credits. Leave a certain door propped for ten minutes, or turn a certain computer on and log in, or take a coffee break two minutes early. As the tasks got harder, the rewards got better. Then, he started demanding I break rules. I one time stole a shuttle a flew it to a place and dropped it off and left it for five hundred credits. The next morning, the shuttle was back where it belonged with no security logs of me taking it or anyone returning it.”

“But you're not supposed to talk about the Hunt. To anyone. Or punishment,” the lone krogan of the group growled. “Which is going to come down now. He'll know. He'll know we talked.”

“Tough shit,” Violet barked. “Tell me about Johann. Why'd he have to die?”

“I can't figure it out,” Dax confessed mournfully. “I can't imagine he knew any more than the rest of us. But we all got the message, I'm sure. Somebody kill Johann. Punishment, the entire group’s blackmail gets released. Reward, ten thousand credits to the killer, two thousand to each in the group. There was also a countdown clock. We had five minutes to comply.”

“Group punishments and rewards, is that common?” Violet asked. 

She nodded. 

“So Anlin got the ten-k and spared you all from blackmail release.”

“He’ll wipe our accounts,” a man whispered. “All of the work we’ve done, erased.” 

“How long have you been doing this? All of you?” 

The accounts varied. The person involved the longest appeared to have been recruited eight months previously. The newest, a month and a half. Several of them confessed to having made thousands of credits over the course of the “game.” 

Vetra put herself at Violet’s elbow, pitching her voice low. “No leadership. No way to chase this up the ladder. They’re all drones, all insulated even from each other.” 

No wonder Reyes hadn’t made any progress figuring out how to dismantle the kingpin. It appeared his influence spread farther than drugs, though. He wasn’t just a cartel leader, but a master manipulator. She doubted oblivion was his--or her--only revenue stream. 

She nodded curtly. 

“Um. Pathfinder,” Dax’s multiple tones all quivered, her voice hushed, eyes fixed on her omnitool. “I just got a new message from H.M. He wants me to read it to the room.”

“I don’t like this,” Cora murmured. 

She gestured. “Go ahead.” 

Clearing her throat, Dax read out, “‘Players of Warehouse B of Ditaeon, you’re released from the game. Pathfinder Ryder, welcome to the Hunt.’”

And, because the Hunt Master had a clear flare for drama, all of the lights in the storage building snapped out. The workers spooked, but lights from omnitools gave them enough to see by as Yijun crossed behind them to prop the door open, letting in gray light from outside. A minute later, the lights flickered back on.

“I’m going to need all of their omnitools for analysis. Tate, I want access to your security terminals and computer servers.” 

“Done,” he agreed feverishly, his face sallow as he looked around like he’d never seen any of the people living in his outpost before. “What do you want done with...them? The...uh…’hunters.’” 

“Your outpost, your call. I’ve got to go follow this thing.” She paused, holding up a hand. “And let’s be clear. There’s only one hunter playing this game. Maybe two, now that I’m in it.” 

“You can have access to whatever you need. Just please. Fix this.”

She nodded and left the building for some fresh air. Rain pelted down overhead, giving Kadara the cleanest scent she’d ever experienced from it. Taking in a deep breath, she held it a moment, and slowly exhaled the way Lexi taught her when she was attempting to help her manage her stress. Rain drops ran in pink rivulets down her armor, mingling with Johann’s blood. 

Somebody else would deal with the body. She didn’t bother attempting to track the killer. Outpost justice could take care of it. She had much bigger fish to fry.

“This whole thing is really fucking weird,” Vetra grumbled, joining her outside. “It’s got my plates itching all over the place.”

“Seriously, it’s like a cult, but...weirder. Culists, I can deal with. This?” Cora shook her head, fingers drumming against her holstered Cobra handgun.

“We take it one step at a time. If we have to, we flush out more Hunt cells. We know he used Ditaeon to funnel drugs through, but he clearly has his hands on people harvesting oblivion, packaging it, and then dispersing it. I don’t care how many heads of this hydra we have to chase, we’ll eventually find one that leads us to a source.”

They both nodded.

“And here I was hoping to flush out some drug cartel’s den by this evening and have time to go cruise the market,” Vetra grumbled. 

Violet let SAM do his thing with Ditaeon’s security and computers, unleashing him onto their systems to figure out where the Master Hunter had infiltrated from. When he returned, he sounded as frustrated as the AI ever sounded.

_ “I believe the Hunt Master scrubbed their trail during the blackout. Many systems have been reset to factory standard, data logs corrupted, and, in some cases, erased completely. The individual responsible may have had their exit-strategy set up in advance. This is professional work.”  _

“Shit.” Her fingers twitched, wishing they had a cup of coffee to clutch. “So we’re back where we started.”

_ “If the Hunt Master successfully infiltrated Ditaeon’s system, there’s the possibility that other systems are infected throughout the Initiative.” _

“Especially if he didn’t have to hack through them, if he got people trapped in his game to open up channels,” she murmured in agreement. 

“Get me a secure line to the Nexus. We should warn Kandros about how security breaches are happening and get him to crack down on his people.” 

_ “There are a lot of personnel on the Nexus involved in all levels of security. If the Hunt Master has even one from each department under his thumb…” _

The Hunt could have spread anywhere. Hell, it could be everywhere. She wasn’t even certain it originated from Kadara anymore.  

“You’re right. We need to get back to the  _ Tempest _ . I need to meet with all of the other pathfinders, as well as outpost leaders. This is just to creepy. They need to be on the lookout.” 

She hoped she was paranoid. She hoped the Hunt was isolated to Kadara and had only begun to reach its tendrils onto the Nexus. However, if she was wrong, they needed to start cleaning house and gutting it from their systems, to purge it from their personnel. Reyes had the right overall plan, even if he didn’t realize the scope of the issue. They needed to apply pressure and choke out the Hunt Master’s power. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whooooops I might have accidentally written some smut in the near future. Gonna have to bump up the rating soon. You've been warned.


	9. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes and Violet settle in for a "vigorous cup of coffee." AKA smut happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically all smut. It's plot relevant, I swear! 
> 
> Okay, so maybe it's not. Whatever. I wrote this whole damn thing to be 100% self-indulgent smut and fluff. Plot happened later on accident. I have no self-control. Sorrynotsorry. Upgraded the tag to explicit. 
> 
> Also, sorry it took so long to be uploaded. I was going to upload Valentine's day, and then that didn't happen, and I've been trying to find time to sit down with it since. Dishonor on me, dishonor on my cow...

Reyes could do almost all of his Charlatan work out of his apartment, which didn’t make him any happier about being trapped in it. He supposed he would use the time preparing Kadara Port to enter the next phase of his plan for it, including a new hierarchy of leadership, hand selected by him, at first, but later put in the proper hands of the public if things went well.

He spent the first half of his day delegating the smuggling jobs he had lined up and the second half of the day stooped over datapads of floorplans, figuring out how to reconfigure the three top apartments into a vast, livable space. His apartment, on a normal day, was only a place he slept and ate. He spent the majority of his time on the _Gambler_ or in Tartarus. He anticipated wanting space to roam, rooms to exist in after getting bored with the others, even the ability to sprint back and forth to keep his blood moving.

How long could six months actually be?

He checked on the data feeds from the docks. The _Tempest_ remained grounded, her crew secure in its confines. Whispers emerged from Ditaeon, though. His spy there knew that something had unfolded in one of the warehouses and a man was dead. People were being asked a lot of questions about “the Hunt.” Violet had returned straight from the outpost and gone to the _Tempest_ without so much as checking in with him. At first, panic gripped him as he anticipated her abrupt departure, but the ship engines remained offline and Kallo hadn’t sent any queries to the portmaster about takeoff schedules.

Sitting and fidgeting began to wear on him, so he poured himself a glass of high-end brandy and settled in to brood.

His inbox pinged the moment the Pathfinder emerged from her ship, about 1900 hours Kadaran standard time. She headed toward the slums, giving him a sigh of relief, especially because she shed her escorts and armor. She wouldn’t venture out into the badlands without company, narrowing down her list of destinations to his place or Tartarus, and she held little fondness for the grungy club.

She entered her personal code to let her in without knocking, the doors whisking silently aside. “I thought the rain would improve this godforsaken landscape, but it’s only made it muggy,” she complained as she kicked off her boots just inside the door. Before he could reply, she continued. “I have had a hell of a day, I tell you what. And I’m only going to say it once, so enjoy the fuck out of it, but you were right. I wish you had kept me out of this one. You’ve got a serious problem here, and not just some drug cartel snatching power. Your streets are more unsafe than you think if things are as pervasive as I’m worried they are.”

She slumped into his living room and dumped down on the sofa next to him, pulling her legs up and tucking her head under his armpit with one arm curled around his middle. Violet was one of the most persistent human beings he’d ever met. It took more than a bad day to wear her out.

“What happened out there?” he asked, smoothing her dark hair back. She’d recently washed it, the dark strands like spider silk under his calloused fingers.

“Well, first I had a brain explode all over me.”

“What’s unusual about that?”

“I had my helmet off and chunks of brain and skull and I don’t know, eyeballs, probably, got all over my face. I’m talking, in my mouth, my nose, my eyes, all in my hair…”

He removed his hand. “Oh.”

She reached out to his other hand and appropriated his drink, lifting it under her nose to smell. “What is this?” She ventured a cautious sip.

“It’s brandy.”

“Brandy? I didn’t know you were into brandy.” She made a noise in her throat after a measured sip. “I don’t think it’s for me.”

“It’s from the Milky Way. It’s a rare vintage and…”

She tipped her head back and tossed it back like a shot. “Yeah, that’s terrible. What else have you got?”

“That’s...not how you drink it,” he spluttered, voice darkening with disapproval.

“We drank your fancy-ass whiskey out of the bottle that one time.”

How could he have forgotten? Reyes had the remains of that bottle in his liquor cabinet and still sampled from it occasionally. Usually, it brought back pleasant memories of kissing her on the dock. “That was different. And besides, it helped me get you drunk and back to my place.”

She scoffed as he pushed her off to stand. “Let’s be real, Reyes. I’d have gone back to your place stone sober.”

He cast her half a smile, turning into the kitchen to get into the cabinet above the coffee pot. “What are you in the mood for? Whiskey? Tequila? Vodka?”

“Got any gin?”

“You cleaned me out last time.”

“Whiskey, then.”

He poured them both glasses--the cheap stuff--and returned to the couch to hand her one. She resumed her position draped across him while she drank, her body warm and soft. Few people got to see Violet Ryder this way, relaxed and malleable. The larger public saw her as an unyielding force of nature, a person who led charges into battle and made tough decisions that would crack a lesser man or woman. They saw their undefeated Pathfinder, who was more symbol than person.

“So, what happened after you got brain on you?” he prompted.

She snorted into her whiskey glass as she lifted it back to her lips. “Uncovered a conspiracy. It’s a weird one.”

“Oh?”

“I know you’re a control freak, especially about intel, but can we talk about it tomorrow? I’ve talked about it nonstop since I hit Ditaeon.”

He bristled. He wasn’t a control freak.

She tipped her head back, her hair tickling his chin, and drained her glass, then plucked his out of his hand. Curiosity prickled at him, but he reigned it back. Prying it out of her tonight would make them both grumpy, and she’d already blown him off once on the _Tempest_. If she could wait until the morning to solve the problem, whatever it was, he could wait until the morning to hear it.

“So the walls come down tomorrow,” she mused, forcing the change of subject.

“That’s the plan.”

“I still can’t believe the families in them moved out that fast.”

“I gave them incentive.” He traced his fingertips up her smooth arm and back down. “From the outside, it shouldn’t look like I’m occupying all three. Not that it matters. It’s an easy excuse to just say I made a lucrative score and upgraded.”

She drained the second glass, setting it next to the other on the coffee table in front of them, then nestled into his side. “That’s a lot of extra space.”

“I can’t leave my apartment for six months. I only wish I could build a deck off of one of the exterior walls.”

She sneaked a hand under the hem of his shirt, skimming over the skin of his ribs. His breath hitched somewhat embarrassingly over the little touch. Violet utterly undid him.

“Once you get the remodels done, we’ll have a lot more surfaces to christen,” she mused.

He found himself chuckling, gazing down at her fondly. “Deep down, you really are an optimist, Violet Ryder. I don’t care what anyone says.”

She laughed with him, the stress breaking from her expression, slinking away to invade her mood at a later time, helped along with the alcohol and, he hoped, the company. She pushed off his chest to sit up and steal a kiss.

He broke away quickly, glancing toward the door. “Your brother isn’t going to walk in on us again, is he?”

“I’ll shoot him myself if he tries,” she promised, undeterred in her mission and pressing seductive kisses on his neck, her hands free-roaming under his shirt.

Tangling his hand in her thick waves, he brought her mouth greedily back to his. She made a little, needy noise she in the back of her throat, breaking past what little composure he had left. The need for her skin against his, her lips, her passion, all of it, drowned him. It had been almost a month since her last trip to Kadara, each week a painful reminder that their lives rarely intersected when convenient. The heat in his body roared to be released.

Yet, he took his time, his fingers painting patterns across her skin under her shirt, etching against old scars and ridges of muscle, but when he his hands meandered up her spine in search of her bra clasp, they reached the tops of her shoulder blades before it occurred to him he hunted for something that wasn't there.

She’d come prepared.

Curious, he leaned her back, stretching her out on the couch so he could hover above her his weight resting on his left arm, lips claiming hers. He squeezed a hand under the band of her pants, groaning into her mouth when his hand stroked against her sex, unimpeded by underwear.

Very prepared.

She surged into his hand, wiggling closer, seeking. Reyes normally prided himself on his control and restraint, but Violet brought ruin to all of it. If he had the patience he would have played with her, drawn out every moment and made it last until she was a gasping, quivering, boneless heap. Three weeks was a long time, he reasoned. Or had it been four?

Never one to make him guess what she wanted, Violet scoured her nails down his arms. “Just fucking touch me already, Reyes, please.”

She got bossy in bed. He loved it, because he won whether he complied with or defied her. Tonight, he let her set the tone. He didn't have the willpower to make his own plan.

Parting her gently, he first teased circles against her, watching her gasps quicken and tasting her first little moans in his mouth. She was already slick with want, his fingers gliding silkily from her entrance to her clit. He could have taken his time to pick her apart more thoroughly, but she made a rough demand for “more” and he buried his fingers in her tight heat without hesitation.

Violet raised her arms and tossed her shirt off to the side. She had petite breasts, her job not giving much leeway to maintaining any extra bodyweight. She was lean and hard and the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He captured a taut, brown nipple in his mouth, his heart fluttering when she tilted her head back with an explosive sigh.

After freeing herself from her shirt, she managed to wriggle her pants halfway down her hips so his wrist wasn’t trapped against her body, giving him a better range of motion. He used the freedom to dig his thumb against her clit and extract another deep gasp. Once he found the exact pattern to get her whispering pleas against his skin, he picked a relentless pace. She buried her face against the crook of his neck, hips stuttering with the effort to get closer to him.

Using his free hand against her shoulder, he pushed her back and pinned her down against the couch, using his weight to keep her from bucking him off. He got the pleasure of watching her fall apart with nothing but two, clever fingers curling in her heat and thumb stroking out patterns.

While drinking in the sight of her, he found a mottle of yellowing bruises on her shoulder, something old and probably not worth mentioning now. He always uncovered bumps and bruises in various stages of healing on his Pathfinder’s body once the clothes came off. It should have been commonplace by now, but each bruise represented a moron who tried to kill her. Her armor could take some serious hits without damaging her skin underneath and the bruises represented only a fraction of the bullets that hit a mark. That knowledge never found a calm place to settle in his mind.

So he kissed the bruises tenderly, giving her skin a gentle contrast to the violence, and stroked her into a wanton mess.

“I want to see you,” she gasped between hitching breaths, tugging at his shirt.

“I’m busy admiring you.” He smirked as she fought against the hand that pressed her firmly back. “Among other things.”

The fight didn't last long. She sprawled back, arms tossed above her head to hang onto the couch’s arm. She gave up almost too easily. Usually, once she let him pretend at control for a few minutes, she started making demands. He eased off, slowing his ministrations and studying her face to find what he had missed.

“Don't stop. I was close,” she huffed indignantly.

He tasted her lips, but pulled away, leaving a trail of burning kisses down her body as he scrunched to the opposite end of the sofa, breathing in her yearning musk. “Yes, Pathfinder.”

He replaced his circling thumb with his tongue, digging it against her, then smoothing it, holding his fingers deep in her core. He lapped up her intoxicating, familiar tang, the taste mild compared to the sharpness of the cheap whiskey they just shared.

Violet gripped the sides of the sofa, one long leg tossed carelessly over the back as she unraveled, body taut, spine curving. She made a few words of either praise or demands, none of them particularly coherent.

His impatience got the better of him, speed over quality. Whatever. He wanted to hear her cry out, for every muscle in her body to clench as powerful shocks wracked her. They could take their time later. He employed his most basic strategy--using his trove of gathered data to hit every known spot until she broke.

Lovemaking wasn't unlike torture sometimes, he mused, but he shoved that thought off. Too morbid for the current activity.

After her climax claimed her--back arched, toes curled, fingers digging trenches into his shoulders, he eased away to let her come down, her breathing rasping beautifully.

“Get undressed,” she panted, eyes fixed on the ceiling, throwing her loose arms above her head. Despite the wreckage of her body, her tone brokered no room for argument.

He obeyed, shucking off shirt, pants, and underwear while she picked herself up off her back and murmured her thanks in his ear, teeth grazing against it. His cock, stirring with interest over the past few minutes, quickened under her steady touch. She pushed him back into recline and lowered down in a slow, exacting motion that struck him as predatory. Violet knew he loved a good aesthetic, so she took her time, stroking his growing erection with one hand and teasing her lips over the head, eyes turned up to watch him come unglued watching her.

Fuck, she was beautiful.

He stroked her hair as she engulfed him in the warm, moist cavern of her mouth. Violet was a perfectionist. She worked with the same persistent, single-mindedness that translated to all corners of her life, starting slow and letting the heat tighten and grow until, one-by-one, all of his senses shut down except to revolve around her. She knew just how much suction to apply, just how much speed, and when. As a general rule, he'd always thought guys were better at giving head, but his _amor_ loved breaking rules.

She backed off several times, working him beautifully and then drawing away and leaving him wanting. Her nails scratched lightly on his thighs, her hair tickling his skin wherever it brushed. Every nerve flared, joining in the cacophony of sensation that she built.

She had a battle plan, he knew. She always did, seeing his reactions before he did, having already figured out her next move. She always went left when he thought she'd go right.

By the time he heard himself beg for release--“Vi, please. I'm close. I'm so close. Just a little more…”--she pulled the culmination of her plan together, dipping her head and taking him to the back of her throat. He thought she was going to let him come like that, anticipating the ripping pleasure that awaited him, but suddenly she was gone, releasing him entirely and pressing consolation kisses up his chest.

“You want to move this to the bedroom?” she cooed in his ear, catching his earlobe in her teeth, which sent an unexpected spear of tingling down his spine. He swore she had to have SAM helping her know exactly when to hit his erogenous zones.

He made a hum of agreement, but he took a moment to catch his breath. They untangled from each other, shedding the remains of clothes--a pant leg caught around a foot, a stray sock, underwear still looped around a leg.

As he stood, a boom rattled the entirety of Kadara Port. They both startled, but in different ways. Reyes flinched and Violet grabbed the gun he kept taped to the underside of his coffee table.

“Thunder, not weapon’s fire.” He intervened quickly, pulling the gun from her hands and setting it beside their empty whiskey glasses.

Kadara's climate had changed radically since she corrected the vault and brought Meridian back online. Right now, they seemed to have entered a rainy season, although the sticky heat persisted. Storms had kicked up to go along, delivering frequent bouts of thunder and lightning.

“Shit.” She dragged her hair back with her hands, expression sallow.

He read the sudden exhaustion in her posture, the weariness that eroded her composition. Maybe tonight they would take it easy.

“This job is going to kill me. Of course it's thunder.”

Rain hammered against the windows facing the badlands, adding a low undertone to the next peal of thunder. Spears of purple and white lightning streaked the black sky over the hills.

Sliding his arms around her waist, he pulled her against him with a laugh. “I'll keep you safe from the big, bad storm.”

“Fuck off,” she complained.

He tugged her toward the bedroom. “It’s okay to be scared.”

“I will hurt you.”

Despite her threats, she let herself be towed along.

“I mean, if you really want to. I've got a whip or a crop or something somewhere…”

“Shut up, Reyes.”

“Shut me up, _hermosa.”_

His bedroom still didn't rival the size of the pathfinder quarters, but it was bigger than the closet-sized space her had in his last apartment. Violet shoved him down on the bed--playfully, of course. A real shove would have thrown him through a wall. He'd seen her break people against bulkheads with the application of her biotics.

Reminiscing about seeing her in a fight turned him on more than he could describe.

“Come here,” he rasped, drinking her in, despite the shadows.

“SAM, give us some ambiance,” she requested, committing her weight to the mattress and prowling up his body.

The lights turned on enough for them to see what they were doing between lightning strikes.

Normally, Reyes didn't mind that Violet let her AI lurk in her head at all times, including during sex. She explained that she could have him pause his logs and go silent, leaving no trace behind of their encounters, but SAM learned and developed through her experiences. She was afraid, with all of the violence in her life, he wouldn't have enough good experiences to counterbalance it. Nobody wanted a bitter, jaded AI. Then, she reminded Reyes that the AI was sexless and accused him of being a prude.

Normally, he was fine with SAM around.

Tonight, he stiffened, even as she left a smattering of kisses on his neck, her hand wrapped back around his cock. “Violet, what is SAM doing controlling my apartment’s lightning?”

She didn't let up, rubbing the head across her sex. “I had him hack in so he could tell me when and how you escape.”

Reyes had already made contact with the Collective’s best hackers about beating the house arrest system. They knew each other too well.

And if she wasn't literally impaling herself on him with shallow thrusts of her hips, he might have been madder about it.

“Damn it, Violet,” he groaned.

“It's insurance. Do your thing. I know you will, whether I want you to or not. I just need to be able to report back to my superiors that I took steps to keep you honest.”

She started a slick glide, braced against his shoulders, making it hard to focus on anything she said.

“You know I don't want SAM lurking in my house.”

“He won't be keeping logs of anything you say or do. Just escape attempts.”

“He’s in my system! He's controlling my lights and god knows what else.”

This was not how he wanted to have this conversation, on his back, Violet absently slaking her lust on his body. He could throw her off, but he could also put a pin in it and resolve to argue later.

Her words bit out between gasps. “He's an observer. He won't mess with your home systems unless I ask him to and he won't record anything you say.”

That was less than reassuring, but he lost the will to bicker, overruled by more fickle body parts currently demanding the majority of his blood flow. He admitted--albeit reluctantly--that the low lights let him drink her in, let his gaze linger on the curve of her breasts and scar tissue wrapping her right arm from the shrapnel of a grenade she had used her own body to shield him from. He could see the beads of sweat forming on her chest and the flush of her cheeks. Her body was strength and seduction, pliant only for him.

He rolled her, capturing her lips greedily and digging his hands into her shapely rear while he ground into her heat. She shared the kiss, tongue dancing against his, hips rolling in cadence to his rhythm.

He promptly forgot why either of them had been mad at each other lately.

When his fingers sought her clit to toy with, her nails dug into his shoulder hard enough to leave welts. Reyes didn't mind when she marked him up. He kind of liked it. She usually came and went from his life so fast it was nice to have a lingering reminder.

Her moans sharpened, her back arching off the bed, legs hooking into the backs of his thighs. He wanted to turn her over, to pound her into the mattress with reckless abandon, but the tone of her voice kept him on course for now. She looked languid and complacent. Usually, “mellow” didn't describe her bedroom behavior. She truly must have been tired.

“I'm going to come,” she panted out breathlessly a little sooner than he expected, carving tracks down his arm with one hand, the other touching the wrist of the hand he stroked her clit with like she wanted to take control of it, but didn't dare.

Reyes watched her face as she spilled over into chaos and pleasure, every muscle in her body clenching. He slowed up, but rode through the waves of her orgasm until she retracted her nails from his skin and released the wrist she held.

If he backed off for a minute, he might have staved off his own finish, picked a new position, and found an even better high, but her need for a reprieve won over his desire to take this long into the night. She'd enough of a day. Tossing control out the window, he shuddered into his climax, slumping down over her to taste the sweat between her breasts and take a moment during the afterglow to caress and treasure her.

She pushed her fingers into his hair and brought his mouth back to hers. They kissed languidly, rearranging their limbs into a sweaty tangle.

“Damn, we wasted no time with that. We're either getting efficient or boring,” she drawled, tracing the shell of his ear with her index finger.

“You're tired.”

She sighed, eyes lidding. “I am. Between the time discrepancies between the Nexus, the _Tempest_ , and Kadara, I've essentially pulled an all-nighter.”

He sat up and dragged her upright, coaxing her gently. “Come on. We'll shower off and you can get your beauty sleep.”

In rare form, she actually let him take the reins without complaint. Sated, sleepy, she staggered along after him and half-dozed through the shower, letting dictate the scrubbing. When she finally collapsed back into his bed, she stole all of his pillows to burrow into and started snoring almost immediately.

“SAM, could you get the lights?” he sighed as he eased down on his side of the bed, debating wrestling one of the pillows away for himself.

The lights faded to absolute darkness.

The AI’s presence in his system made his bones itch, especially if he was supposed to conduct Charlatan business out of his home. He and Violet tried to keep their careers well separated, and this seemed like crossing a line, despite her insurances he wouldn’t be paying attention or recording conversations.

“Rest up, _amor_. You’re going to need your energy to fight me on this one,” he whispered to her.


	10. Bullseye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning, the time when Reyes cooks, Violet sucks down her first coffee of the day, and interruption is always only a breath away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because sometimes I just desperately want to write domestic fluff.

Violet woke up before Kadara’s sunrise, groggy, but unable to get back to sleep. So much for that circadian rhythm she had been working on for Lexi. She blamed the fact that the _Tempest_ and Kadara’s standard times were almost a full twelve hours apart. Sleeping through the night here meant sleeping through the day according to her internal clock.

Beside her, sprawled out and taking up the majority of the bed, as he usually did, Reyes snored lightly, dead asleep. He didn’t stir when she sat up and checked her omnitool for messages. Nothing had imploded while she got laid and rested. Miracles really did happen. She pressed a quick kiss to his tattooed shoulder and rolled out of bed, opening his closet and picking out a t-shirt of his and a clean pair of underwear that was hers. She kept the basics here in his apartment for overnight stays.

Lights flicked on for her as soon as she exited the room, although SAM refrained from trilling a good morning. She asked him to be subtle about his presence, especially around Reyes. She thought about letting her AI lurk unannounced in his apartment, but in the end figured her dishonesty would give him permission to do the same at a future date. The look on his face when he realized SAM was in his system had been well worth the reveal, even if it meant a fight down the road.

The rain drummed a steady rhythm against his window while she set up his coffee maker and then poked around his cupboards while it percolated. Reyes always had the best contraband stashed away. She found a box labeled “donuts???” with what appeared to be prototypes using Heleus materials. She made the conscious decision not to read the ingredients list scribbled on the side before sampling from it.

“They aren’t very good.”

She didn’t turn, setting the “donut???” aside, instead reaching into another cupboard for mugs. “How long have they been up there? That about chipped my tooth.”

“A little less than a month. I’ve been meaning to toss them. Or maybe use them for ammo.”

Reyes wore low-slung sweats that showed off the warm expanse of his chest and belly and the tattoos that wrapped his shoulder and upper arm. He watched her from the open bedroom doorway, propped against it, eyes heavy-lidded, hair pushed up on one side. She loved him like this, glimpses of the man at his most vulnerable.

She filled a second cup with coffee and held it up for him.

Detaching himself from his prop, he padded over and accepted the offering with a stolen kiss. “How much time do I get you for this morning?”

“I have business in the badlands. I want to check out the Remnant stash sites you found and figure out how they’re being used.”

“What did you find out yesterday?”

Damn. She forgot she still hadn’t told him. She retreated to a stool at the bar counter that often doubled as a workstation and kitchen table, taking a long drink of coffee. Reyes, meanwhile, picked through his cupboards and refrigerator to put together a real breakfast.

“Right. That,” she sighed.

She went into the events as they unfolded at Ditaeon. The murder, the confessions, the frustrating dead ends. Reyes didn’t interrupt her while she spoke, cracking eggs and chopping vegetables almost as if he couldn’t hear her, but she knew how his calculating mind worked. He absorbed the details as she gave them. From there, it was anyone’s guess what conclusions he would draw.

“So we’re left with plenty of questions. We don’t know what he or she is after. Big picture, that is. The drugs are fueling something, but my gut says there’s more to it than building an empire of addiction. And why would they bother having Johann killed? I got all of the other people talking within five minutes.”

He prodded the edges of a cooking omelet with a spatula, his voice eerily neutral. “They were making a point. Johann being dead wasn’t the goal. Your Hunt Master was proving to you that you’re in a serious game with deadly consequences, and that he can make his players do anything. They’ve been stuck between his stick and carrot so long they’re willing to commit murder at his say so.” He flipped the omelet.

“Why didn’t the H.M. tell them to kill me?”

“Maybe he wanted you to be part of the game, not eliminated from it.” He cast her a look over his shoulder, mouth twisting. “It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve been seen as useful to a criminal organization.”

She shrugged, giving him that.

“He fancies himself a hunter. If he didn’t have his people kill you, then he has bigger prey in mind. Make a list of everyone higher than you on the food chain.”

“You’re on that list, Charlatan. Speaking of, you can bet the Collective has been infiltrated, at least at some levels.”

“Leave the Hunt’s influence on the Collective up to me. You have enough to worry about.”

She couldn’t read his face or tone. Whatever he had in mind for flushing out the rats in his house, he wasn’t going to share it with her.

Reyes plated two omelets and passed her one, taking her coffee mug in exchange to refill it before joining her at the counter to eat, offering her a bottle of hot sauce to dump on the eggs.

“What’s the cheese?” she asked, prodding it with a fork.

“I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Eyeing him suspiciously, she doused the entire thing with the hot sauce. She knew for a fact that cows and goats weren’t yet available in Andromeda. Not that she had any reason to distrust Reyes’s cooking. He could give Drack a run for his money. The first bite reminded her that, dubious cheese aside, his skills steamrolled everyone on her ship’s.

“So,” he said after they had a chance to eat a few bites, “about SAM being in my system…”

She groaned, reaching for her coffee. “It's not even oh-six-hundred. Can't this wait?”

“I draw the line at having him lurk in my home. On your ship and in your head is enough.”

“Then tell me, with certainty, that you won't try to find a way out of this house without setting off proximity alarms.”

His hesitation was more than damning enough, not that she ever doubted it.

“I’m on thin ice, Reyes. House arrest was a sentence, not a suggestion. They need to know the Initiative comes first to me.”

A little frown wormed its way across his face. “Good to know where I stand in your priorities.”

She had no time for that shit, not after he once told her to her face that their relationship wasn't more important than the Collective. Granted, he'd eventually eaten his words, but if they wanted to come first in each other's lives, they would have to seriously restructure their relationship, their jobs, or both.

At her cutting glare, he threw up his hands. “Fine. That wasn't fair. You know me. I covet your attention and I get jealous.” His tone took the sting away from his previous statement. He reached across the counter to settle a hand on her wrist, thumb stroking her pulsepoint.

“You haven't exactly made it easy to put you first. Maybe if you quit breaking laws…”

He winked. “You like me because I'm a rebel.”

Not strictly untrue. She made a point to only date men her father would have despised, and the criminal mastermind with the cover of a smuggler would have topped the charts if Alec had been alive to witness it. However, this was, admittedly, the only relationship she fought for, the only one she stayed through. She couldn't boil her motivations as to why this one was different down into anything simple, but she had her reasons.

Taking another sip of coffee, she finally said, “I like you because I'm a masochist, and you're the most difficult thing in Andromeda to date.”

“Even with kett and eirochs on the list?”

“You bet.”

“Ouch.”

She caught the hand that caressed her wrist, turning her arm over and tangling her fingers in his. “Do you remember what you told me about your mother?”

The indignation melted from his face and he tilted his head a fraction. “Is this a serious conversation now?”

She nodded. “I suppose so. We had a pretty hefty wrench thrown into our gears. I'd gotten complacent. I forgot how hard it can be to be Violet while being the Pathfinder.” Something she knew he could relate to.

He nodded cautiously. “What does my mother have to do with this?”

“You told me, after your father dumped you with her, that it would have been easier for her to pass you off to CPS. You weren't her kid, you were a terror, and you didn't deserve her patience.”

He groaned. “Okay, I see where you're going with this. It's not a flattering comparison, _amor_.”

She smiled, tightening her grip on his hand. “She didn't just keep you, Reyes, she fought for you.”

“I fought for her, too. When I realized what I had,” he reminded her.

“You're worth that fight. Veronica saw it back then. I see it now.”

Violet may not like how he conducted his Charlatan business, but she nevertheless respected it. He'd seen injustice in Sloane Kelly and he did something about it. Granted, not the way Violet would have gone about it, but Reyes walked his own path. She wanted to be part of his journey, wherever it led him. They approached their legacies so differently. Violet already had a planet named after her, but nobody would ever know what Reyes Vidal did for Kadara. He operated exclusively from the shadows. The impact he would leave would never bear his name. He earned no credit or blame, no matter what happened.

Sliding off his bar stool, he stood in front of her and tilted his forehead against hers. She breathed him in, letting him work through whatever thoughts he needed in order to continue.

“She would have liked you,” he finally murmured, lips hovering close to hers.

Veronica Vidal had lived out her life in the Milky Way while they slept their way across darkspace. Violet had checked data packets sent to Andromeda from the survivors of the Reaper wars in the Milky Way. New generations of Veronica's family lived on, even hundreds of years after her death.

And because neither of them were allowed to have nice things, their omnitools began pinging them at almost the exact same time. Anticipating a crisis, they both jumped back to check.

“What the fuck! Somebody graffitied the Nomad! They painted a giant bullseye on the side,” she cried in outrage.

At first, she almost demanded to know how it had happened, but she had the answer before it left her lips. The Hunt Master had orchestrated his minions again.

“One of my pilots fell through who was supposed to take over part of my workload. I have to find a replacement,” he sighed.

The events, at least, seemed unrelated, despite their timing.

Reyes caught her arm as she slid off her stool to go dress. “Hang on. We're in the middle of a serious talk. You got to say your bit. I get to say mine.” When she nodded, he continued. “I’m a greedy bastard.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I know that.”

“And to be honest, I kind of want you to fail at this. I don’t want you to find your Hunt Master.”

Her eyes flattened.

“Because,” he pushed on, fighting a smile, “I’d like it if you had to stay here looking for him, getting to wake up to the smell of coffee and the sight of you rummaging through my kitchen, wearing my clothes. I know you give me as much of your time and energy as you can, but I want more.”

She felt a flare of arousal at the rasp of his voice and intensity of his eyes. Heat pooled in her belly, burning straight downward. “You are a greedy bastard,” she breathed.

“The worst.”

She checked the time, wondering if they could squeeze in a quickie before they had to attend their other obligations.

“I need to deal with this, Vi,” he apologized, drawing close and planting a hand on her ass, voice dropping to a husky whisper. “But when you get in tonight, we're going to take our time. I'm going to pull you apart piece by piece, make you scream so loudly you'll wake the neighbors.”

“You bought out the neighbors,” she reminded him, words unsteady.

“Only the close ones.”

She shivered, cursing the Hunt Master and his stupid games. Reyes wanted her to stay. She wanted to stay.

“Better get dressed.” He gave her ass a squeeze and slipped away.

Violet reluctantly shoved her lust aside to get on with her morning. Reyes's voice took on a cocky drawl as he made his calls, playing the part of nonchalant smuggler that morning. He sat in his living room, data pads spread out in front of him, making his way through idle chitchat with someone before diving into business. After dressing and stealing a thermos to take a cup of coffee with her, she sneaked up behind the couch and wrapped her arms around him from behind, lips teasing up his neck. His voice never wavered, even as he leaned into the kisses and shoved a hand into her hair.

“I'll be back to finish this,” she murmured into his ear before slipping away. On the comm, she announced that she was heading out to the Nomad.

Peebee and Liam were already out there, checking out the new paint job. It usually sat in a gated lot with other land vehicles while they conducted business in and out of the badlands and the business that ran it prided themselves on their security. A fair few assholes in Kadara would love the opportunity to tamper with the Pathfinder’s ride. The bullseye didn't lend itself to the rig’s aesthetic. Gil would probably happily repaint it, but he would get plenty of miles out of complaining while he did it.

“Gil already checked it and she's good to go. And Vetra’s up chewing out the lot manager,” Liam told her as she grimaced at the bullseye.

She accepted the armor they brought her and dressed quickly. “Not exactly subtle.”

“I don't like it,” Peebee grumped. “It’s too twisty. Like, outlaws, whatever. We've dealt with those since day one. But this? A big, evil shadowman pulling invisible strings to make random people do his bidding? Gives me the creeps.”

Violet finished buckling down her gear and took a drink of coffee. “Well, let's go find the remtech he's been using, pull it apart, and dig out what's inside.”

“That, I can get behind.”

Liam didn't seem as thrilled be going out on the adventure. “You can leave me out of cultists. I liked this when it was just drug dealers.”

“I don't like this any more than you guys. Let's go shut it down.” Violet finished fastening her armor down and scraped her hair into a sloppy braid to fit under her helmet.

They left the bullseye to be dealt with later and piled into the Nomad, Liam up front scanning through maps and Peebee in back where she could fiddle with her gear in preparation for dismantling some Remnant.

“You ever notice how the rain almost makes Kadara’s smell disappear?” Peebee mused as Violet set their navpoint into her map.

“Give it an hour to heat up. It'll be back.”

“I just can't believe how much it's changed since you activated the vault and got Meridian online. Our scientists already even see changes in soil composition. It's wild how fast the terraforming changes things. Predictions are all over the place as to what Kadara's climate is going to do over the next five or ten years.”

Violet squinted out at the overcast sky, this morning broken with patches of sun. She considered settling here. Kadara had lakes she could build on. At least the water didn't erode flesh in the matter of minutes anymore. People reported it was safe to swim in, even, and Kadara no longer required ice shipments from Voeld to keep up with population demands. Reyes would like it--hell, he’d suggested it. Even if he followed through with eventually retiring from his role as the Charlatan, she doubted he would ever leave this planet.

“Yeah, well, it better keep improving,” she grumbled, hitting the boosters to cut their drive time down. “I'm probably never going to be rid of this planet.”

“You quit screaming at Reyes, then?” Peebee sniggered.

“That mostly depends on your definition of 'screaming.’”

“Get it, girl.”

Liam rolled his eyes. “Can we get through one car ride without discussing anyone's sex life?” Especially Violet's. His crush on her hadn't ended gracefully.

“You feeling a little tense there, Liam? I know some tricks in the escape pod that could loosen that stick up your ass,” the asari cooed, tickling the back of his ear with her finger until he slapped her hand away.

Violet snorted into her coffee thermos and resolved not to interfere.

“It’s too early for this. I'm going to nap until we get there.” He propped himself against the door.

Peebee scooted forward so her face  between the two front seats. “Since he's sleeping anyway, the rest of have bets to settle.”

“I told him that SAM is chilling in his apartment,” she offered, figuring they all had money down on something related. “He complained, but it's not like he had any real leverage to do anything about it. And I might have told him while distracting him with other things.”

“Think that'll set back his escape time table?”

She shrugged. “Depends on how good the hackers he hires are.”

“He say anything about that?”

“He omitted, but it was obvious enough he already has people working on the problem.”

Peebee giggled. “Your boyfriend is fun. What's he up to this morning, SAM?”

_“I'm not monitoring anything but the apartment perimeter for breaches, Miss B’Sayle. I am not keeping logs of any of Reyes’s activity within. He did bid me good morning ask me a few questions about my presence, though, which I did preserve in my memory.”_

“Lame.”

“He has to conduct business out of his house now. That's shit I don't need to hear.”

“Yeah, and what if he brings people home? Do you need to hear that?”

“You know, trust doesn't actually work if I have to spy on him to keep him honest.”

There were reasons Violet didn't let SAM monitor his pulse or respiration when they spoke, reasons she didn't pry into his business unless it directly affected her. She couldn't let her relationship operate under an umbrella of paranoia. Having SAM in his house now was actually a directive from Tann, one she didn't dare ignore, but she made sure to set parameters to allow Reyes space and privacy.

Reyes needed to be allowed to lie to her. He needed it so he could make the choice not to. It was, quite possibly, the most important pieces of their foundation. The day she took away that freedom from him, or the day he abused it, their relationship would well and truly be over.

Peebee slumped back in her seat when it became clear she couldn't cajole anything more out of Violet. She instead turned her attention out the window to the passing landscape. “Scientists are saying the soil is actually pretty nutrient dense without the sulfides poisoning everything that tries to grow. I wonder what the place is going to look like once it has a chance to seed.”

Violet grabbed her thermos. “A coffee plantation would be nice.”

“Priorities, am I right, Ryder?”

She grinned, hitting the throttle on the Nomad again. “Fuckin’ A.”


	11. Construction Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes oversees alterations to his apartment while putting new schemes in motion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SORRY
> 
> I feel into a deep writing-less hole. It wasn't fun. I missed these dumb assholes. I have at least two chapters to update, so you'll get this and one other and hopefully more before the hole reclaims me. You readers are the true heroes of this story putting up with my flaky ass.

Reyes and Keema Dohrgun usually only met in social capacities. They had been noted together before the rise of the Collective, but infrequently. She was a terribly busy woman, after all. They occasionally saw each other during gatherings and parties when he bothered to show up, and she met him for drinks once or twice over the past year in Tartarus, just like old times. A house call was unprecedented.

“This should get people talking,” he mused as he let her in. 

Keema held herself with the regal bearing of a queen until the doors slid closed behind her and she shed her masks to embrace him fondly. 

“I'm sorry about the missiles. I reacted--”

“Like an angara,” he interrupted. “For the first time ever. I'm actually a little impressed. I had no idea how fond you were of me.”

“Shut up. I hate it when you're sarcastic with me.”

He let her hang on for an extra minute. Keema was the least angaran angara he had ever met, but even she had her limits. Finally, she released him and entered the apartment with a critical look around. She hadn’t been impressed with his last apartment, either.

“It’s bare in here. No pictures, no possessions. This space could belong to anybody. Or nobody.” 

“I’m not sentimental. Do you want anything? Drink?” 

“No, thank you.” She wandered over to his couch, sinking down onto it and pulling a data pad. “You should put a picture up of your Pathfinder.”

That was just what he needed, Violet’s face staring him down every time he ordered the “extraction” of information from an enemy or moved assets around to fund a weapons deal. He glanced around uneasily, too aware that SAM could listen to everything they said. Both he and Violet assured him that he would not be eavesdropped on and nothing would be recorded unless it pertained to an escape, but he struggled to trust them. 

“She’s fetching for a human, isn’t she?” Keema pressed. “You could hang worse things on your walls.” 

“I’m not putting up a picture of Violet.”

Although he did give serious thought to commissioning a nude mural of her, now that he realized it was an option. 

“Why not? Wouldn’t she be flattered?” 

“She isn’t nearly so vain. My apartment is fine.” 

“This is your home, Reyes. Why do you live like you could walk out one day and never return?” 

It wasn’t something he wanted to argue about. Besides, if she got an eyeful of the  _ Gambler _ , she wouldn’t think he lived such a spartan existence. It kept his clutter, his few trinkets of note. Ships always felt homier than apartments to him. This was just a place to sleep. 

“I’ll get a plant,” he offered. “Or, I guess, have someone get me a plant.” 

“If you’re going to live here for six months, you might want more than a plant.” Her hands folded primly in her lap. “I want to come back after you take down the walls and remodel. I’ll bring you a plant myself.” 

He fought a smile. “You spoil me.”

Keema studied him, expression unveiled, like she searched for cracks in his armor. She knew him better than anybody. She understood his identities and had been one of precious few confidants over the last few years. It put her in a unique position of power, something he trusted her not to lord over him. 

A smile breached his face. “You pointed missiles at an outpost for me.”

He received a small crackle from her bioelectricity, toned down for human consumption. He couldn’t decipher exactly what it meant, since all bioelectricity buzzes felt the same to him, but usually she only sent them when she was emotional. 

“Thank you, Keema.” 

“You’re welcome.” Her starry blue eyes never wavered from his face. “Things aren’t exactly smooth with Christmas Tate, but they’re better. He’s distracted with issues pertaining to the Hunt. I reassured him we would be taking a critical look at our own people for involvement.” 

Turning from her gaze, he retreated to his kitchen to pour the remains of the coffee pot into his mug. His cup-a-day habit had turned into a two-cups-a-day habit since he started seeing Violet.

“We  _ will _ be taking a critical look, won’t we?” Keema pressed. 

“I’ve only known the details for an hour and a half. I haven’t figured out how I want to flush out anyone playing the game in our ranks yet, but I will let you know.”

Whether there were advantages to be exploited from the Hunt or not, it gave him a queasy feeling. Violet was an unstoppable force when she got fixated on something, but his instincts hummed. This wouldn’t end overnight with either a body in the ground or behind bars. She solved problems as straightforward as possible with applications of either diplomacy or violence, but Reyes played the long game, and he wasn’t unconvinced that his first plan didn’t have merit. However, he’d gone about it all wrong. 

Joining her in his modest living room, pushing aside the fresh memories of the things he and Violet had done on the couch Keema now sat on, he got to the real business he wanted to discuss. “I want you to talk to Ryota Nakamoto.” 

A frown pulled at her lips. “He won’t talk to me. He won’t talk to any Collective agent, especially now that he has the protection of Ditaeon.” 

“I know, but he owes us. I kept him afloat in that shipping container long after Sloane would have seen him banished or dead. He kept his patients alive because of us. It’s time for him to pay up.” Reyes had personally funded the free clinic before Sloane’s downfall, but the regular payments hadn’t endeared them to the doctor in any capacity, and until now, he was happy to let that be the extent to their relationship. “I’m going to blackmail him.” 

Keema made a low, hissing noise. “He won’t comply. You’ll do nothing but alienate him and he’ll turn to Ditaeon for safety.”

He didn’t need her opinion about this. His mind was made up. “I have the dossier of some of the experiments he ran during his tenure with Sloane. Things he’d rather keep out of the hands of the Initiative.” 

“Kadara doesn’t have enough doctors. He plays a vital role in keeping our population docile. If people start getting sick…”

“I know,” he interrupted. Even after Nakamoto moved his operation to the outpost, Reyes made sure that his citizens always had access--healthy citizens made for happy citizens. “Few people know all of the extra-curriculars Sloane had him doing while he lived under her thumb. I think it’s enough to spook him into complying with us. If he does this for us, I’ll consider our business concluded and destroy the dossier.” 

“Does what?” 

“I want him to adapt a new strain of oblivion for us.” 

Now, she stowed her data pad, no longer bothering to take notes, noticeably bristling. “You’re insane. He’ll never do it. He’d sooner be exiled into the badlands. Now, you’re wasting my time and yours. I have a full schedule without adding in this madness.”  

“Convince him, Keema. It’s what you’re good at. If anybody can do this, you can.” 

She shook her head in disgust, unmoved by his flattery. “You’re going to aliante Kadara’s best doctor. He’ll quit helping exiles, even if the Initiative throws him out for what you reveal.” 

“All we have is Sloane’s recipe. If I had another pharmacist to toy with it, I would use them, but Dr. Nakamoto developed it. He knows it.”

“And what about your beloved? You told me she was furious with you for dabbling in drugs. And it’s not like we can sell them here. You said so yourself, it would be a bloodbath to enter a turf war with established drug cartels. That’s why you chose the Nexus as your experiment ground in the first place.” 

He’d put a temporary hold on oblivion production, but he had everything in place to start it up again. In the meantime, it bled credits, between paying for personnel and equipment with literally no return.

“I have a plan. I’ll bring Violet in after we have the new recipe from Nakamoto. She won’t like it, but if this Hunt Master proves elusive, she’ll see reason. She always does.”

Violet’s capability of putting her personal feelings aside for the greater good had benefited him in the past. If she let her heart rule her actions, she would have outed him the second he revealed his Charlatan identity. She may not be happy about his plan, but she may need it.

Eyeing him skeptically, Keema sat back down. “What plan?” 

“Why Keema, I thought you’d never ask...” 

After explaining the twisting paths of his strategy and soothing her trepidations, he managed to get her to agree to try. They would be taking a gamble, but despite all of the good he did for Kadara--especially the underprivileged--Dr. Nakamoto was a pawn, one that Reyes had avoided using for a couple of years. If the scheme worked, all parties benefited. The doctor would get to continue his work unbothered by his past and Reyes would have an advantage on the oblivion market not even the Hunt Master could compete with. The general public of the Initiative might even appreciate it.

With that set in motion, he sent his instructions to one of his local proxies to speak with Nakamoto and deliver an invitation to meet with Keema. Keema bid him a good day and left to go practice what lines she wanted to use to convince Nakamoto that the arrangement benefited everyone in the long run--or threaten him, if necessary.

After his morning business concluded, workers arrived to begin remodels of his apartment. He made himself pour over scouting reports to keep busy while more people than had ever visited his home trooped in all at once to begin dismantling walls. 

“Knock knock!” an accented voice called from his open doorway.

Reyes closed down his omnitool, rolling a lazy look toward his front door as Gil Brody,  _ Tempest _ engineer and lowkey genius, maneuvered around a turian toting a powersaw. “Are you here to see me or my perimeter pins?” 

“If I wanted to see your perimeter pins, mate, I’d have brought you flowers.”

He stood and greeted the redhead with a brisk handshake. “You want a beer?” 

“Depends whether it’s that pisswater you prefer or a proper draft.”

Of all of Violet’s crew, he had an actual, tentative friendship with Gil. The engineer had helped him with repairs on the  _ Gambler _ directly after the Meridian battle while they were both grounded and recovering. They took a while to find the right footing with each other, but he thought they settled into the right amount of bullshitting and dead-end flirting that wouldn’t get either of them into trouble.

Crossing to his refrigerator, he selected two bottles imported from the Nexus, passing one off and motioning him to the living room where they would be out of the way of the construction crew.

“So, how’s the kid?” he asked, since this seemed like a social call. 

Gil tipped his bottle up to sample, seemed to find the beer to his taste, and said, “Most beautiful thing in Andromeda, like I can’t even fucking believe. I still can’t believe she’s real, you know? Like, she’s got bits of me in here and I can see them.” 

H e grinned, extending his beer bottle forward so they could clink together. “Congratulations.” 

“Ryder tries to get us back to the Nexus as often as we can, but she grows so fast, you know? But she knows me. Every time we dock, the second she sees my face, she lights up. And it makes me feel okay about leaving, you know? My pop left, but he didn’t come back. As long as I keep coming back, that makes me better than him, right?” 

Eyeing the engineer, he raised one, slow, eyebrow. “You came to talk about your feelings? Should Violet be jealous?”

“Like you ought to feel special. I’ve had this conversation with a thousand other people, but I can’t shake the need for reassurance. Didn’t your dad leave?” 

“Eventually, yeah. I was better off for it. He was an asshole.” 

Gil took a drink, eyes pensive, then dashed a glance around. “Six months trapped in this pyjak cage, huh?” 

“The lawyer didn’t bother trying to barter it down.” 

“Yeah, because it was literally the best offer you were ever going to get,” he snorted. “And given how pissed Ryder was about it, I’m surprised she didn’t throw down for a year. I’m curious to see what your people come up with to spring you.” 

Reyes made himself the picture of innocence. “So little faith.”

“You want in on a tip?” 

“I never settle for just the tip.” 

A rich, deep laugh burst from Gil’s chest. “I bet you don’t.” His smirk turned a little cocky, but he left it at that. “SAM can only monitor while Violet’s on planet. The second we pop off world, eyes are off you.” 

Information like this didn’t come for free, but Reyes knew Violet’s crew just well enough to guess why he got this morning’s friendly visit. “You wagered too far out, didn’t you?”

He held up an innocent hand. “I’d never try to influence the subject of a bet. I’m just here, you know, chatting about my kid and being friendly.” 

“Does that mean the others all made shorter bets? Did Violet get in on this one? What’s hers?” 

Ignoring him, he focused back on his beer. “You heard nothing from me.” 

“You are the worst gamblers in all of Heleus, and I say that living on a planet of degenerates.”

They watched as lasers cut through a large chunk of the wall in front of them, coming down in pieces and loaded onto a sled to be shuttled off. Noise from the other end of the apartment indicated the other workers disassembled the wall in his bedroom. His sleeping space would have to be moved to one of the other apartments. 

“Violet wants a lake house,” Reyes said abruptly, lifting his beer back to his lips. “She didn’t seem enthused when I mentioned Kadara has lakes.”

“Not surprising. Kadara’s lakes smell like ass. Who wants to live on top of one?”

It took every ounce of self-control in his body not to make the obvious innuendo and derail the topic. “They won’t be like this forever. Would it be so bad? To build something here.”

“What plans do you two even have for your futures? Together, I mean. I know she plans to Pathfind until Tann physically rips SAM’s implant out of her head, but you’re going to be busy with all of your stuff for at least a few more years, by all accounts. Do you two want to get married? Have kids?” 

His stomach wrenched itself in an unhealthy somersault. “We haven’t talked about it. We’ve been so focused on just making this last more than a few months.” 

“It’s been, like, a year.”

It had. In the beginning, both of them doubted their ability to commit long-term and long distance. Between their jobs and respective relationship histories, they had quite a few obstacles stacked in front of them. It didn’t even occur to them that they had already made it farther than they ever thought possible. He wished he could have consulted with Veronica, gotten whatever words of wisdom she had for him. She’d been shit at relationships for a long time, too, but she eventually figured it out.

The workers in front of them began smoothing out the edges of the open wall in the space they created. The noise was deafening, giving him time to brood over his beer.

“They get shit done,” Gil remarked when they could hear each other again between uses of the grinder. “You’re going to have this apartment functional in another hour.”

“I didn’t want to make a big, long project out of it. I have deliveries for more furniture before the end of the day.”

Turning toward him, the other man asked, “Why don’t you pack it up and move to Meridian? You don’t need to physically be here to do most of your work. You coordinate and delegate it all, so move your home base, build her a lake house, and live your best life.” 

“This is my home.” 

“You're kidding, right? You can make a home anywhere. My home is wherever Jill and Meri are. Doesn’t matter if they’re living on the Nexus, Meridian, or in a fucking cardboard box orbiting in a debris field. Where they go, I go.” 

“It’s not that simple.”

“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking to me for, anyway.”

Because he was there and Reyes’s only other friend was an angara who would encourage him to make a big, romantic gesture. Keema had researched human courting practices and badgered him about getting a ring made whenever he brought up his relationship. He could have asked Kian, but the bartender preferred lurking and listening to meddling. 

Beside him, Gil suddenly straightened, head slightly cocked, as if he were listening. “Roger that.” He relaxed back, taking a pull from his beer. 

“What was that about?”

“Huh? Oh. Nothing. The first Remnant stash was empty of both Remnant and stash, so they’re heading out to the next point.” 

Reyes envied the regular crew updates, wishing he could be included in them. Of course, she could always check in on their personal line, but plugging him into their comm network would simplify things. He supposed he would have to make himself into a pain in the ass to get them to grant him access.

However, he wasn’t ready to let their previous conversation go. Like a dog with a bone, he pulled them back. “Her home isn’t Meridian anyway. We all know what she considers home, and I can’t follow her onto the  _ Tempest _ .” 

“You better not. We do not need the extra drama with you trying to play house with our Pathfinder on that ship. Not to mention, Kallo would lay and egg.” 

He and Kallo were on okay terms, but he would imagine that would change if he joined the crew. He had specific thoughts on how a beauty like the  _ Tempest _ should be flown. Kallo was an ace pilot, as good as they came, but Reyes wouldn’t be able to sit back and let someone fly the ship if he lived aboard. 

“Kallo is the least of my problems. I’m still banned from Initiative property, which the  _ Tempest _ is.”

Gil reclined back, propping his feet up on the coffee table and nursing the second half of his beer as he studied the workers buzzing back and forth between apartments. “I guess you have six months to think it over. I’d use the time to figure out what you want. Then see if any of it matches what she wants.”

“She ever talk about what she wants?”

Reyes should have plied him with a second or third beer before fishing for intel, but he doubted he could talk Gil into getting properly buzzed at 0900. He decided to throw the dice on the gamble. Whatever edge be could get before diving into awkward conversations with Violet.

“I mean, other than the kett to stop shooting at her and another cup of coffee?” he shrugged. “She wants viable planets and happy, homesteading citizens. Not complicated, our Pathfinder.” 

He made a point. Subterfuge was Reyes’s game. Violet tended to pummel her way through problems. 

“Don’t overthink it. If you just ask, she'd probably tell you.” Gil drained the rest of his beer, setting it on the coffee table. “Do you even like lakes?”

“Hell no. I don't trust nature.” Reyes was a city boy, through and through. 

Gil stood, heading for the door. “So what does it matter what planet the lake is on? It's not for you anyway.”

He didn't get the chance to respond before the engineer ducked out. Leaning back, tipping his own beer back up, he watched the evolution of his apartment for a few minutes before using his omnitool to open encrypted messaging ports to his people. Reyes had some hunting of his own to do. He had six months to stew over his relationship. More presently, the Hunt Master drew Violet into his deadly game, a challenge that he couldn't let go unanswered. He'd leave her to cut off the head--it was what she was good at--but he could start tracking down and hacking down limbs to make her job easier. He'd start by cleaning his own house.


	12. A Good Trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Searching for clues about the Hunt, things go awry for Violet and her team

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liiiitttle bitty content warning: non-consentual drug use ahead

Despite pushing hard, getting to all of the Remnant sides took up most of the day. They checked the navpoints they had for known stashes, finding them all empty, and hit every Remnant site they came across between. They criss-crossed farther out into the badlands than they usually got, even passing the area they took on Kadara’s Architect.

They finally hit the last known stash spot, the one farthest from Kadara Port. The place contained artificially created walls and raised areas that enclosed the space the Remnant formerly occupied. They rolled up with little subtlety. Violet cut the engine and blaring music. The nice thing about traveling with Liam and Peebee was the consensus over entertainment. Their individual tastes overlapped just enough not to start wars over the radio. 

They didn't see any signs of Remnant lurking around, not much to their surprise. They piled out to scan the area for anything that might have been left behind. 

“Looks like there’s a few scraps from a firefight. Somebody got here before us and caused a tussle,” Peebee remarked, picking through the shards of dead Remnant. 

“Any of them have enough parts intact for you to pull...whatever it is you pull?” 

The asari shrugged, Poc and her scanner working double-time. “We’ll find out. If you and Liam could grab any other pieces you can find and consolidate them over here for me.” 

“Garbage duty. Love it,” he snorted, hopping up onto the raised ledge of the Remnant site. 

The two of them grabbed hunks of twisted metal to dump near Peebee so she could run her analysis. Within ten minutes, they had a decent pile of scrap for her to work through. Violet hovered, not that she could make any sense out of the information Peebee pulled, and Liam stood on top of the Nomad with an eye on the horizon. They kept helmets on. After getting shot at in the warehouse and the bullseye painted on her ride, she wasn’t willing to risk any idiot taking pot shots at them. Nobody could rightly claim Violet had a grasp on “caution,” not after the caliber of stunt she regularly pulled, but she occasionally indulged an impulse of paranoia. She blamed Reyes’s influence. He took paranoia to unprecedented levels. 

“Well...that’s interesting,” Peebee hummed, practically vibrating with excitement.

“What is?”

“I don’t know what our hacker used to interface the Remnant, but it’s not so different than the way I do it. They just changed the programming. Simple concept, not so simple execution. You can do it because you’re you, and I can do it because I’m me. The person responsible for this is no dummy. These Remnant were taught to differentiate between allies and enemies so that mercs can camp out.” 

“Can you tell how they recognize allies?” 

“Looks like a transmitted code, changeable remotely, which would come in handy if you decided that your merc allies knew too much and you decided to make them merc enemies.”

“So based on this and what we found at the outpost, it's safe to say that either the Hunt Master is a high grade hacker, or they have someone on their staff who is.” She nudged a piece of twisted metal with her toe. “Hey, remember when we had dumb, bumbling enemies and we never had to guess where they were and what they were doing? I miss that.”

“Enemies with delusions of grandeur who loved rubbing their diabolical plans in our faces?”

“Enemies who basically painted 'I Am a Bad Guy’ in red pen across their evil looking foreheads?”

They both sighed longingly.

Not that Violet particularly wanted to go back to that. The Archon had nearly killed her, killed Avery, and everyone else she knew and loved. True, at least he made for an easy target because he made no bones about his intentions, but he had so much power he didn't need subtlety.

“So the real question is, who is the Hunt Master’s big target?” she mused. “They're playing this elaborate game. Who is the guest of honor?”

“We got money on that yet?” Liam asked.

They all took the next fifteen minutes or so setting up a new wager board and getting everyone’s bets hammered out. Violet found herself amused by the extent of conspiracy theories her team constructed, from Lexi’s, “It started as a small, personal revenge and got out of hand,” to Gil’s bet, “Someone just wants to watch the world burn,” to Vetra’s, “This goes all the way up. They're after Tann.”

After they had no luck finding anything additionally useful among the scrap, they ate a quick dinner sitting on top of the nomad staring out at the amazing view. She even allowed them to convince her to dehelmet in the open for the meal, lest her love of paranoia start ruining meals. She breathed fresh-ish air and munched her sandwich. Kadara might not smell like a basket of roses, but it had mountains and rivers and a bloom of vegetation that promised bigger yields as pH balances edged away from the extremes. It had stunning sunrises and sunsets. It was just so beautiful now. So, so beautiful.

Gazing out at the view, a kind of peace settled over her as the colors seemed more vibrant and a choir of angels lilted out some background music. Violent raised her fingers to paint with the clouds, a little smile playing at her face.

“Wo-o-ow,” Liam crooned next to her. “My hair is  _ so _ soft. Feel my hair. Peebs, feel my hair.”

“Can't. I'm trapped in that flower over there. It's petals are soft like rainbows and taste like tomorrow. It's singing to me.”

Violet giggled as clouds smeared under her fingers. She brought her index finger to her lips to taste it.

_ “Pathfinder. Your brain is producing unusally high levels of seratonin and norepinephrine. Additionally, I'm detecting changes in your brain's neural pathways that might alter the way you identify with the physical world around you.” _

“That was so many big words, SAM.” She licked more clouds off her fingers.

_ “Colloquially, you might be hallucinating.” _

She giggled. Beside her, someone fell off the nomad with a thump, but the clouds held her attention.

Another voice buzzed in her ear.  _ “Pathfinder, what's going on? SAM thinks you're high. Is everything okay?” _

“Totes,” she affirmed, leaning up to lick the sky.

_ “Pathfinder!” _

“I found it! Pathfinder, I found it!” Liam cried.

She gasped. “Found what?”

“My hand!”

“No way.”

He choked out an emotional sob. “It was here the whole time.”

Somebody took hold of her arm and tugged her down from the Nomad. She rolled into their arms and gave them a hug, humming along with the choir singing in the background. Everything felt amazing.

“Damn, how much did they dose her with? What is she high on?” a turian fluttered.

“Like we'll ever know. It probably happened ten steps ago.”

Violent leaned toward them and said, “Hey, now. I don't do drugs. Except for that one time. But that doesn't count. And that other time. But that doesn't count either.”

A face swam in front of her vision with the most magnificent mandibles she had ever seen. She reached out to grab them, giggling when he caught her wrists and redirected her. 

“Got any other secrets we should know?”

“Shh. No. I don't keep secrets. Except from Tann so he doesn't blow his butthole.”

“Secrets like what?”

She hung onto her new friend's arm, enchanted by the rough texture of his armor. There were dings and marks from bullets and chemical burns. They were well loved and well battered. Her fingers traced the caverns and valleys of the arm piece, the the scrape of the pads of her fingers deafening in her ears.

“You are a warrior,” she whispered. 

“Yeah. A warrior.”

“Just like me.”

He grunted, the noise turning into a little hairless, tubby animal that scurried around at their feet. “Yeah. You and me, Pathfinder. One and the same.”

“The same. Person? Are you...me? Am I a turian?”

“Okay, we got to get out of here. You done stripping their gear, Julie?”

A female voice replied, “Damn, they outfit these assholes well! You are not going to believe the backup guns they have. I'm talking second-string weapons most people don't even see. Fuck, I hate these guys.”

Violet touched her face, searching for mandibles. “I can't find my mandibles.” She expanded the search radius to the rest of her head. “I can't find my fringe!” A sob wrenched from her chest. “I'm an ugly turian!”

“I'll fuckin’ say,” her warrior friend muttered.

“We're almost wrapped up. Hey, Pathfinder, can I get a selfie?” A burly krogan rumbled.

She frantically wiped her face. She had to perform for her public. The tears grew wings and flew off her face into a radiant sunset. She reached out to catch one and bring it back.

Her new friend posed next to her while pictures were taken, others jumping in for their chance as well. 

_ “Pathfinder,”  _ SAM said.  _ “Grab the krogan's gun and shoot him.” _

“That's rude!” she gasped. “I couldn't.”

_ “You need to defend yourself. I'm adjusting your brain chemistry as quickly as I can, but you aren't metabolizing the substances you were given quickly.” _

“Shooting people is not nice.” 

Her new friends had a lot of opinions about that. 

_ “Do you trust me? Violet, do you trust me?” _

“I don't trust you.” She waited a sneaky beat, then giggled out, “I  _ love _ you!”

“Okay, better knock her out before her trip turns bad. Julie, you have the delivery coordinates?”

“I've got half of them.”

“I have the other half. What are we doing with the other two?”

“We’re leaving them as they are. Let them enjoy whatever shit they're on. I'm sure they'll feel good when they sober up.” The turian cackled gleefully, grabbing hold of Violet again, raising what looked like a perfume bottle to her nose and mouth. “Breathe in deep for me, babe.”

She opened her mouth to object to the moniker, but the breathe had an acidic tinge as the turian spritzed. 

The world shifted. Blackness opened up and swallowed her with SAM shouting in her ear to grab the gun and start shooting. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shovels out fanfic* 
> 
> I'ma keep on it!


	13. The Smoke Loophole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes entertains some guests

Convincing Violet's team to share their comm channel with Reyes hadn't gone as well as planned. They were still unamused with his Nexus stunt, providing lame excuses to keep him shut out. In the morning, he would put out a call for a hacker to see if he couldn’t weasel his way into the conversation anyway. It honestly annoyed him that they didn't assume that would be his solution and save him the time.

He worked out his frustrations by moving his entire bedroom setup to the master bedroom of the leftmost apartment. The owner had previously remodeled to give it larger closet space, which Violet would appreciate. She could move half her wardrobe off the  _ Tempest _ . Lord knew it was already overflowing with stuff. He dismantled the bed frame and hauled the pieces and mattress into the room to put back together. In the morning, after recruiting a hacker, he would figure out the rest of his furniture and how to disseminate into his new space. 

Nobody reported on the Nomad returning to town by nightfall, so he assumed the team planned on staying in the badlands through the night. He didn’t admit out loud that he hoped they would return and he would get a second night next to Violet and to possibly cajole her into letting him in on the comm channel so he wouldn’t even need the hacker. 

Shoving the bed around a few times to work through excess energy and get the best feng shui going. Once he got the bed situated, he hauled in his bedside table next, noticing a couple of things missing from the drawer and wondering if he should be worried Violet seemed to prefer his turian shaped toys.

By the time he muddled his way through a series of reports on Charlatan business to round out his evening, he about went crazy with a need for an update.

“You saved the world yet, Vi?” he asked, opening up his private channel to her. He didn't like interrupting her when she was on a job for no reason, just in case she needed her attention in front of her. 

She didn’t respond. His pulse clicked up a few beats, but he resisted the urge to panic and tried again. 

“Vi, what’s your status?”

Silence. 

He opened his comm to Gil. 

“Hey, you there? Any news on Violet?” 

_ “Busy, mate.” _

“Gil? Seriously? Gil!” He’d been cut off. Muttering to himself, scraping a hand over his hair and ruffling it up, he said, with some measure of reluctance, “SAM?” 

_ “Yes, Mr. Vidal?” _

“Can you make anyone on the  _ Tempest _ talk to me?” 

_ “They are all quite busy at the moment, but you are to be notified when they have an update.” _

“Busy? Busy with what? Did they find something? Did Violet get the Huntmaster? Why isn’t she answering me?”

_ “I’m not authorized to give you information about any ongoing investigation without the Pathfinder’s expressed approval.” _

“Oh, for fuckssake. I thought you liked me, SAM.” 

_ “I do like you, Reyes. I consider you a friend.” _

He doubted it in that moment. In a fit of frustration, he tabled his Charlatan reports and opened a fresh page to research what kinds of houses people preferred to build near lakes. He assembled a packet of information and ended up sending the entire thing off to Violet to get her opinions on things, since hers was the one that mattered anyway. He added a voice message to it to add some context. 

“Hey, Vi, it’s me. Obviously. Who the hell else would be sending you shit about lake houses? Unless there’s something you’re not telling me. Anyway, I don’t know what you want or where to start, so I researched a fuckton of examples. Architecture is not in my lane of expertise, believe it or not. Pin the ones you like and get back to me. I might as well put my house arrest to good use, so let’s dream up a lake house like you’ve been wanting. When I get out, I’ll build. And I’ll build wherever you want. Pick a world. Pick a lake. I don’t care which one, I’ll find a way to make it work, because...because I love you. I just want you to be happy. If it’s a house on a lake that’ll do it, let’s do it. If I survive house arrest, because let’s face it, I’m on day two and I’m already going crazy. Okay. Love you.” 

He closed down his screens and threw off his clothes into a pile on the floor, climbing into bed to start the long process of getting his brain to shut up long enough to get to sleep. Of course, he instead buzzed with worry over what Violet was up to and why nobody had responded to him. She must have run into some trouble. Trouble, she could handle. Trouble generally ran away screaming from his Pathfinder. She chewed trouble up and spat it back out just for shits and giggles. Still, his stomach knotted and he wished he had been available to help out, or at least monitor her progress. 

He spent over an hour pouting before dropping off and only rose out of a dead sleep when SAM whispered his name. He blinked awake, disoriented from the cobwebs of his dream, and looked around his dark room. 

_ “Mr. Vidal. Reyes. Wake up.” _

“M’wake,” he yawened, scrubbing his face. “I thought you weren’t supposed--”

_ “Shh! Someone has breached your security and entered your apartment. I count five total, all armed.”  _

He bolted upright. “What? How did they get in?” He rolled off the side of the bed and dropped low onto the floor, grabbing a pair of sweats to yank on and the shotgun he had fixed to the underside of his bed frame. The readout on his omnitool informed him that it was half past oh-three-hundred. 

_ “It appears they bypassed your security code. I don’t believe they know that you expanded your home to the surrounding units. They are preparing to assault your old bedroom.” _

“Well that’s a fucking relief.” 

All of his guns were stashed in his original apartment, except for the shotgun that made the move with his bed. If he weren’t on house arrest, he would simply leave through the front door of the left unit he occupied, but the perimeter pins would shock him and knock him out if he tried to go. He would have to take care of the invaders the hard way and hire someone to haul the bodies out after. 

“Any idea who these goons are, SAM?” 

_ “They are not carrying any defining traits. Three humans, an asari, and a turian. Two humans are carrying handguns, the other an assault rifle. The asari has a shotgun. The turian, knives.” _

“Seriously? Knives? They packing body armor?” 

_ “Yes, but it looks pretty worn. They have entered the old bedroom.”  _

“Thanks, man. I owe you one. I know you broke your directive to do this.” 

_ “Keeping you alive supersedes all other instructions. I told you. We are friends.” _

“Damn straight.”

Reyes took a breath and quietly opened his bedroom door and crossed the dark apartment toward the middle unit where the hit squad that he would still be sleeping. His bare feet were virtually noiseless against the cheap carpet. He pulled up at the last juncture between apartments and listened for voices. They whispered, the hisses too indistinct to make out, but it gave him a direction to follow and a target to hone in on. 

He leaned around the corner, his eyes tracking very little in the dark except for the small penlights being used to see.

Dropping his voice, he whispered, “SAM, can you turn on the lights for a three count on my say so?” He closed his eyes and covered them with his hand. “Ready? Go.”

The lights in the apartment popped on for a few seconds, pulling startled noises from the home invaders. When the rooms again darkened, Reyes moved, striding into the main apartment, finding a target, and unloading three successive shots into them. He dropped into a roll after that as bullets ripped after him, scrambling for the cover of his couch. It was too flimsy to block projectiles, but it hid him while they frantically searched with their tiny flashlights. 

_ “I’ve alerted the team. They are on their way,” _ SAM announced. 

They wouldn’t arrive quickly enough. Even without foot traffic to fight, the  _ Tempest _ was about a ten minute walk away. A lot could happen in ten minutes of close quarters shooting.

He grabbed the handgun he had stored under the coffee table and jammed it in his waistband, popping up to unload another shotgun blast at his enemies. 

“Lights!” he shouted as they turned to fire on him. 

SAM blinded them while he shot for the adjacent apartment, sliding behind the kitchen counter as a hail of bullets whizzed after him. The lights cut again, drowning them in darkness. He had kept his vision to a squint, so he wasn’t as affected as the others seemed to be. 

“SAM, how do I get out of here?” he asked. 

_ “You need to light a fire.”  _

“What?”

_ “Smoke will disable the perimeter field.” _

“It will also burn my house!”

_ “You could alternatively employ toxic gas.” _

“Torching my own house it is. Fuck.”

He couldn’t blame Violet and her team for not telling him about the smoke loophole. He had to admit they were probably smarter to leave it up to him to find out on his own. If the death squad hadn’t shown up to try to murder him in his bed, it probably wouldn’t have taken him more than a few days.

_ “They are splitting up,” _ SAM announced. _ “Two left, two right.”  _ His voice sounded over the wall speaker where they could all hear, instead of through his omni-tool.  _ “Oop. They’re stopping. Probably wondering who I am.” _

Reyes took advantage of the distraction to pop up from his cover and lay down some shots, counting out each one carefully. Unless he got back into the middle apartment, he didn’t have access to any extra guns or ammo. Before he could return though, the turian charged at him, sliding over the faux-granite countertop and swiping at him with her knives. He got off one shot, which her body armor absorbed, before she hacked a hunk of flesh out of the back of his arm and the gun flew out of his hand. He knew better than to grapple with a turian, but he had been thrown out from his cover and the other three moved in. The only thing keeping them from finishing him off was the lack of light and the possibility of hitting their friend. 

He managed to grab one wrist to deflect the knife in it before it speared him and did the only thing he could think of. He slammed his head forward, aiming to hit his forehead against her mouth, about the softest target on a Turian's tough face. The other knife in her hand scraped his ribs as he missed entirely and smashed half his face into her chin and left mandible. She cussed vividly and he popped his aching face forward again. Lord knew his hard head could take a few extra knocks without any lasting damage. This time, bone cracked against bone, leaving them both dazed, although self-preservation kicked in and he managed to boot her off. 

He felt the heat of a bullet pass over his head as one of the others fired on him again. He scrambled back, getting one arm tangled in a stool that came from the darkness. Picking it up, he pitched it the direction of his attackers and circled around, vaulting past them back into his apartment. He scrambled into the kitchen, turning burners on and grabbing a hand towel to throw on top of them, hoping it caught quickly. Then, he grabbed the gun he had stashed with the pots and pans and laid down some cover fire for himself, aiming at anything that moved in the darkness. He heard at least one of them strike a soft target, although he imagined body armor kept it from causing any damage. 

They remained at bay, exchanging gunfire with him more halfheartedly than before. He put down enough bullets to discourage another charge. It gave them a chance to regroup, but it also bought him time. The stove at his back got hot. A minute later, the towel he’d thrown on top of it caught fire, shedding some light in his apartment. He kept his head down after that as a smoke alarm started shrieking. 

Popping up, he added to the chaos, peppering shots across the apartment. Ducking low, he made a break for the left apartment where he’d been sleeping, skidding around one of the corners just as they realized he’d moved. From there, he had a prefab wall to provide a barrier as he bolted for the door. He broke out into the clean night without stopping, going straight over the rail and shinnying one of the posts down to the next level, and leaping that one, too. He wanted to be long gone by the time his guests realized he was no longer playing games with them inside the burning apartment. He hoped they got lost in the smoke and burned down along with it. 

Reyes made it to the ground, putting on a hard sprint to get even more distance between himself and his enemies. He was barefoot, only wearing sweats, and bleeding in several spots, including his face. He probed tender areas, decided to deal with them later, and headed for Tartarus. 

The club had wound down by the time he grumpily rolled in. He stomped up to the bar, swiping blood out of one of his eyes, and flagged down Kian. 

“The fuck happened to you?” the man grunted, annoyingly unfazed at Reyes's appearance. 

He set his gun down on the bar. “Long story. Get me a double.” 

“A double of what?” 

“Doesn’t matter. Whatever you’ve got.” 

“I thought you were on house arrest.” 

He hissed as some of his adrenaline eased off and his ribs started smarting, blood soaking into the band of his sweats and dripping off his fingertips. “Yeah. Me, too.”

His old friend poured him a double shot of vodka and left him to it. He threw it back and took stock of himself, leaving bloody smudges on the glass.

Cora and Avery marched in shortly after, trailed by Dr. T’Perro. They were all dressed in armor, ready for some ass kicking, except for the good doctor, who toted a little, portable medical kit. 

“You're late, and also, fuck all of you for not telling me about the fire loophole. Kian!” He called, gesturing for his glass. 

“You okay?” Avery checked the corners of the room, his hand on the pistol strapped to his thigh.

“Fan-fucking-tastic.”

“Good.” He swiveled around and marched back out without a word. He seemed surlier than his mood usually ran. 

“Vetra, Jaal, and Liam are dealing with the fire. You're bleeding. Lexi, he's bleeding,” Cora sighed, scuffing her hand through her short hair. Usually it looked fairy tidy, but tonight it stood up on end as if her hand lived there.

He grabbed the shot Kian poured him and tipped it back. “I'm fine.”

The asari doctor pushed forward with her kit, snapping gloves into place. “Anything serious I should know about? Any hard falls?”

“No and no. And tell Peebee to keep her devious little hands out of my--” He faded out, looking between all of them. Dressed for battle. Looking frazzled. “Peebee is here? Why is Peebee here? She's out with Violet right now. The Nomad didn't come back. I would have gotten the alert.” He searched their guilty faces, rising to his feet. “What. Happened.”

Cora's lips thinned considerably before she said, “The Nomad didn't come back. Peebee and Liam hitched a ride on a different transport.”

“Where is Violet?” he exploded, reaching for Cora's vest. 

He never made it. She smacked his hand away and shoved him down into a stool. He nearly missed and toppled to the ground. It occurred to him that he shouldn't try anything on the commando after getting his ass kicked and downing the equivalent of four shots of vodka.

“Let's talk in private,” she growled.

They marched up to the private room upstairs where Lexi tried to get him to sit so she could clean and seal his wounds. He motioned her off, but Lexi was a force unto herself. He wound up standing reluctantly while she examined him and Cora paced, hands again shoving her hair around.

“We weren't going to tell you,” she began. “Because you were trapped in your house and it would only make you crazy.”

“Is there a reason you're teasing this out?” he snapped, barely keeping a lid on his panic.

Lexi started sealing his injuries, moving quickly.

“Somebody kidnapped Ryder.” Cora let that sink in.

His voice got low, quiet. “Details. Now.”

“The team stopped for a meal at nineteen hundred hours. The food had been laced with something. Drugs. Lexi says its a synthetic compound that causes highs and hallucinations. While the team was...incapacitated...what appear to be mercenaries came in and took her. Peebee metabolized the drug quicker than Liam, who is still riding out the side effects. She hiked him to a nearby quarry, stole a car, and drove back. Our comms we're disrupted for about an hour. Currently, we aren't in contact with SAM or Ryder and we lost her location signal. We're calling in another pathfinder and deciding our next move.”

“SAM spoke to me fifteen minutes ago in my apartment.”

“He has cortical functions spread out. We have him on the ship, too. However, the piece Ryder carries isn't linking with the rest. He's either offline or something is blocking his signal.”

“Little shit should have told me.”

Cora cocked her head slightly as if listening, then nodded. “The fire has been doused. They contained it to the apartment you started it in. The kitchen is a mess, but it's livable. The attackers must have carted out any bodies with them when they left.”

Shrugging Lexi away from the gauges on his face, Reyes crossed the room to the false wall above the sofa. He wrenched the panel aside, tossing it down, and started pulling out weapons, ammo, cash, and clothes. He dressed quickly and armed himself. 

“I'll take care of reporting the invasion and fire. I promise, Reyes, we will get her back. I know sitting is going to be tough, but we will patch you in on every move we make from here on out.”

He grunted noncommittally, striding toward the door to head out. He would swing by Keema's headquarters to get armor and figure out his next move.

“Reyes. She's going to be fine. She's a survivor and we will find her.”

“He's not going back to his apartment,” Lexi said blandly. 

“Reyes, you have to return to your home! You are serving a sentence!”

He raised his middle finger as he strode out of the private room, letting it linger as long as Cora stood within eyeline. 

“What is Ryder going to say when she gets back and you have  _ already _ broken your agreement?” she shouted.

“If she's here to yell, I'll happily take it.”

The doors sealed shut. 

Reyes wiped blood off his face and marched back out into the darkness, hoping his attackers circled back around to try to finish him off. He had a few things he would like to try now that he was dressed and properly armed. 

A voice buzzed through his omni-tool.  _ “Reyes?” _

“Hey, thanks for the assist back there, SAM. What do you need?” 

_ “I captured images of your assailants when I turned on the lights. I am forwarding you them now.”  _

“I owe you so much, my friend.” He paused, opening up the file attachments as they came through to him. “By the way, does the team have any leads on Ryder?” 

_ “Not yet.” _

“Let me know if that changes.” 

In the meantime, he would assemble what members of the Hunt Keema had flushed out from the ranks of the Collective and get started prying information from them. One way or another, he would get up the ladder of this thing. He stumped toward the elevator to take him out of the slums, firing off a message to get Keema out of bed so she wouldn’t be surprised when he took over the investigation. The Hunt had already undercut his profits, infiltrated his ranks, circumvented his authority, and now, they snatched his girlfriend. 

He would burn down his entire organization to cut away the rot and get her back if that was what it took.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to take a moment to give a special shoutout to Past HardPass for setting up all of the details and foreshadowing Current HardPass needed to pull this chapter together. From the gun stashed under the coffee table to the apartment remodels to the smoke loophole, she had a vision for what this chapter would look like. She didn't realize it would be written over a half a year after she thought it up, but at least she didn't leave Current HardPass hanging without a roadmap.


	14. Buff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet awakens in an unfamiliar place

Violet came to groggily, her eyes blinking unevenly into a bright light with something buzzing in her head. 

_ “Violet! Violet! Violet! Violet!” _

She groaned. 

_ “Shh. Don’t say anything or call attention to yourself. They’ll up your dose and I can’t safely block any more of your synaptic receptors. Lay quietly for a moment and let the fog clear.” _

She closed her eyes, taking in careful breaths and expanding her other senses. She could hear rustling in the room and clinking and the murmur of voices. She honed in on the conversations, ears pricking. 

“...scans show a fusing. We’re just going to take as much as we can get.” 

“Is the implant going to be enough?” 

“It’s what she wants, so it’s what we’ll get.” 

“Man, the SAM implants are one thing, but this one is weird. Is she sure she wants it as...entangled...in her brain?” 

“We’re just here for extraction. Leave figuring out how to work the technology to the professionals. But between you and me, no way I want this deep of a connection with an AI. If you ask me, we’re doing our Pathfinder a favor.”

“We’re removing parts of her brain. This surgery will most definitely kill her.” 

“Like I said. A favor.” 

Oh. Hell. No.

Violet opened her eyes and lifted her head a fraction, taking quick stock. Her two surgeons were preparing what appeared to be a robotic surgical assistant. The room they occupied was draped with sterile sheets with a a few rolling tray tables of tools. She lay on a bed, stark naked, no weapons, attached to an IV at the arm. 

_ “You’re going to be wobbly and probably a bit foggy for a while longer,”  _ SAM warned through their private channel.  _ “Also, as I’ve had to shut down how the synapses in your brain react to the biological agents introduced to anesthetize you, they might also inadvertently block your natural epinephrine production. You aren’t going to be able to rely on adrenaline to push through.” _

The two butchers planning on cracking her skull and ripping out her implant were turned away from her, debating the levels of AI they trusted. If Violet were functioning at 100%, she would have happily incapacitated them and then interrogated them before forming her escape plan. Since things were looking a little dicey, she figured she would play it safe and aim for kill shots. She would sort out an escape plan later. 

Lip curling, she reached over to get the IV first. Her fingers felt like overstuffed sausages. After a few fumbling attempts, she managed to peel the tape back and ease the catheter free. 

_ “Good. That will make things easier. I’m working on flushing the drug out of your system.” _

Blinking away the lingering fog in her brain, she sat up on the edge of the table and scrubbed her face. Her arms each weighed about a thousand pounds. Her original plan to jump the would-be surgeons fizzled out quickly. No way she could cross that expanse of floor without eating shit. She would have to improvise. She claimed about two minutes of extra peace just sitting there before one of the would-be surgeons turned and yelped in surprise. 

Her eyes flashed up, but dropped quickly. 

“What the hell! How is she awake? I dosed her high enough to take down a eiroch. Help me get her back down.” 

Both of the butchers were scrubbed up wearing sterile aprons, masks, and gloves, hiding most of their traits. One had breasts and the other didn’t, so she settled on using that to tell them apart. Boobs strode forward to take her by the shoulders and urge her to lie back down on the bed while the other grabbed a rolling table with bottles arranged on it. 

She tipped her weight forward, letting gravity do most of the work as the world rotated, despite Boobs’s earnest attempt to push her back into a prone position. Both she and Boobs went down, her weight dragging them to the floor. The woman flailed and whined, not quite catching on that everything Violet had done had been deliberate.

She struck quickly. Even foggy, lethargic, and lacking adrenaline, she still had muscle memory and a high sense of motivation. She flipped Boobs under her, grateful the woman was short and slim and easily manhandled. Violet came out on top, using her gummy fingers to tear her hat away, grab a fistful of blonde hair, and start smashing. The woman’s skull smacked against the ground without much give. She screamed and thrashed, but couldn’t find the leverage to throw the Pathfinder off. She cracked the butcher’s head against the floor a handful of times before somebody hooked onto Violet from behind to drag her away.

She had planned for that and threw her head back. The back of her skull connected with the soft tissue of someone’s face. The hands fell away and she got back to breaking the woman under her against the floor. 

_ “Irreversible damage has been inflicted. Better get the other one before he runs off,”  _ SAM advised. 

Untangling her hands from her fistfuls of blonde hair, she rolled her gaze over her shoulder where No Boobs had removed his mask, his face a bloody mess. She’d apparently broken something. He looked over at her in a panic, both of them frozen for a moment, then he bolted. Violet scrambled after, hooking a hand around his ankle and yanking his feet out from under him. He went down hard, crashing through one of the carts of surgical tools they had prepped for scooping out her implant and parts of her brain. She grabbed a pair of scissors in the chaos and stabbed them through No Boobs’s calf. He screamed and kicked out, catching her shoulder, then again on her jaw, but he was still half tangled in the cart, so he couldn't make a getaway while she reeled back, dazed. 

“How's my brain coming, SAM?” she gasped, rolling to her bare feet.

_ “Your liver is getting quite the workout metabolizing the drugs.” _

“I could really use some adrenaline, you know.”

_ “Yes, I understand. While your synapses are suppressed, I may be able to simulate your organ response to epinephrine...I'm redirecting blood flow now. You should feel it in a moment.” _

Violet clenched her fingers around her bloody scissors while No Boobs got to his feet and snatched up a scalpel. His mask dangled from one ear and blood dripped freely down his face. No Boobs had one hell of an ugly mustache, matted now from his nosebleed.

_ “If you can, keep him alive for interrogation. We need information.” _

“He was going to crack my skull open and scoop you out. I'm not feeling super charitable.”

_ “You're not thinking clearly.” _

“Also his fault.”

The man seemed to think he had the upper hand, being clothed and undrugged. He lunged at her with a wild cry, his stabbing motion sloppy enough that she could have probably sidestepped and disarmed him even stoned up to her eyeballs. He had heart, but no skill, and Violet had been training in half a dozen fighting styles across species for the last two years. She swiped his arm with the scalpel, hooked it under her own arm, and yanked him toward her where she stabbed him in the neck.

_ “I said not to kill him!” _

She released him, palming the scalpel she had taken out of his hand. “I didn't land a killing blow. As long as he doesn't pull out the scissors he'll be fine.”

No Boobs Ugly Mustache ignored her, reaching up and yanking the scissors out. Violet got sprayed directly in the face with the arterial pulse. She fell back with a gasp as he fell to his knees, hands wrapping frantically around his neck. 

“What did I just fucking say about the scissors?” She spat blood from her lips. “You're not actually a doctor, are you? A doctor would have known that.”

He looked up at her with wild eyes and uttered, “I...I panicked.”

Violet searched the scattered surgical tools across the floor until she found a stack of absorbent cloths and some tape. She had no idea if she could apply enough pressure to keep him from passing out without choking him to death, but she supposed she ought to try. She knelt next to No Boobs Ugly Mustache and sealed the wound with the cloths and wrapped them tightly.

“I'd hold pressure there,” she advised blandly, crouched naked in front of him and placing his hand over the wound. “Now, where am I and how do I get out of here?”

His eyes rolled back and he collapsed backward, which couldn't be a good sign.

“Well. Shit. SAM, are we losing him?”

_ “My scanning functionalities are down without an omni-tool to interface. Your guess is as good as mine.” _

She ground her molars and buried her rising panic. “Okay.” She looked around at the sterile room, realizing the hung sheets were really The walls of the room, not unlike a tent. The floor was made from interlocking rubber mats and the temperature was just warm enough her breath didn’t mist, but goosebumps popped up all over her body and her nipples could have taken out an eye. “I suppose nobody heard the tussle. What do we do next?”

_ “Find clothes and lie low until I flush the remaining drugs from your system. You are also mildly dehydrated.” _

She smeared blood from her eyelashes with her hands. “Can you contact the  _ Tempest _ ?”

_ “No. I have been trying, but the the signal is blocked.” _

“Of course it is. We can assume if we can't ping them, they can't get us on scanners. So no cavalry. I guess we're pulling this jailbreak the old fashioned way.”

Violet sat back down on the edge of the surgical table, cradling her head in her hands for a few minutes and breathing deeply. SAM focused on getting the drug worked out of her system while she fit the pieces together in her head. The last thing she remembered was pitching Remtech garbage at Peebee out in the badlands. She didn’t recall a fight or anyone approaching. Just scavenging junk for Peebee, then...a lot of blurriness. A sunset? A sandwich? Clouds? She couldn’t quite grasp the details. 

“Well, nobody has come to check on our brain surgeons,” she remarked at last. “And I’m feeling a little better.” 

_ “You should be. You will probably feel some residual fatigue, but I have restored your endocrine system and synaptic transmission functions.” _

“You’re a hero, SAM. Thank you.” She hopped off the table and stretched her aching limbs out and rolled her neck. “I’m calling this one Operation GTFO. Mission goals are to either escape whatever facility we’re in, or call for backup to come get us, and to fuck up anyone who tries to get in our way. We’re behind enemy lines, unarmed, uncaffeinated, and buck ass naked.” She dropped her arms to her sides. “I already miss the others. They’d have a field day taking bets.” 

Approaching the bodies of the brain surgeons, Violet eyeballed them for their scrubs, making a noise in disgust at each of them as she estimated their heights. Both Boobs and No Boobs Bad Mustache were short and slim. Someone like Peebee might have been able to squeeze into their things, but Violet had too many centimeters on them in height and the extra muscle bulk of someone who trained with elite commandos and tangled with kett in her off hours. The brain surgeons had the flat butts and willowy limbs of people who enjoyed exercising their brains more than their glutes. 

She tried anyway. 

She couldn’t get pants from either of them over her thighs and butt and the shirts were so tight she threatened to split the seams. She couldn’t move her arms and her shoulders were trapped at the level of her ears, her arms hanging awkwardly as a scarecrow's. 

“Nope. This isn’t going to work.” 

_ “There are some sheets in the cabinet to the left.” _

She swung her gaze over to it, struggling out of the tiny scrubs. “You have to be kidding me.”

Stumping over to the rolling cabinet--she got the feeling like the operating room wasn’t a permanent fixture here--she grabbed a white sheet and unfolded it with a dubious sigh. Toga parties really weren’t her thing and she desperately wanted a cup of coffee. 

“Fight naked or fight in a dress? I feel like I’m in a lose-lose situation here.” She tried to wrangled her hair into a ponytail, realizing after a moment she didn’t have a tie to keep it back and let it go with a noise of disgust. “Why did they steal my hair tie? Was that really necessary?” 

_ “They were going to shave your head before performing the surgery. They must have found the hair tie expendable.” _

“Assholes.”

She used another scalpel to cut the sheet up and give herself arm holes and some ties to work with. She got it wrapped bulkily around herself, leaving red spots and streaks where she got blood on it from her hands and body. No Boobs Bad Mustache really splashed her good. She sliced a patch at her waist into strips still connected to her “bodice” and used those to tie on surgical tools that provided her with her only weaponry. She would die without pockets. 

“I’m missing something.” She patted herself down, getting to her empty wrist and heading over to the bodies to steal one of their omni-tools. “Wait. Hold on. They don’t have omni-tools. Why don’t they have omni-tools? Who doesn’t have an omni-tool?” 

_ “That is odd. I might have been able to boost our signal with an omni-tool.” _

She took another look around the sheet-hung room.  “I’m starting to get creeped out. This is creepy right? Are you creeped out?” 

_ “Yes. I am creeped out.” _

“Cool. Shall we go see what’s behind door number one?” 

There only appeared to be one entrance where the sheets partially overlapped at the far end of the room. Violet crept up on it slowly, drawing it aside about an inch and peered out into complete and utter darkness. The only light came from the floodlights behind her. Frustrated, she yanked the sheet aside where it slid on rungs hung from pipes attached to the dark ceiling. There was a small step down from her room and she got enough light to see that she stood in a tunnel of uneven rock formation. 

“We’re in a cave,” she blurted needlessly, peering around in confusion.

The floor had been built up a few inches so that it was even, but beyond her sterile room, rough, dirty stone stretched. Kadara had extensive cave networks all over the place. Their signal might simply be buried under god knew how many feet of basalt. 

“Oh, just great. We have no light, I have no shoes, and who knows how we’re going to find our way out of here. Kadara has miles of lava tubes under the surface. There’s no telling how deep underground we are and what it’ll take to get to the surface.”

_ “The tunnel appears easily passable. The surgeons hauled down their gear, including that surgical robot-assist unit.” _

“Not to mention, they probably had a team do the floor, walls, and lighting.” She took a deep breath. “Do you think the odds are high we can just walk out of here?” 

_ “No. I do not. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.” _

“We could stick around and hope somebody comes to check on our brain surgeons, but I would literally rather starve to death lost in a cave than stay in this room any longer. Unless you have a better plan other than fumbling around in the dark until we find something?” 

_ “I wish, but no.” _

“Fantastic. It’s just like losing my virginity all over again.” 

Drawing a breath, Violet stepped onto the frigid stone floor. She strode into the swallowing black, trailing a hand against the wall to guide her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: writing fight scenes is hard
> 
> Me to me: write a cascade of fight scenes, one after another
> 
> Me: but I...
> 
> Me to me: hear me out. Naked fight scenes
> 
> Me: I hate us
> 
> Me to me: Naked. Fight. Scenes.


	15. Information Exchange

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes follows the rabbit holes of the Hunt, searching for information that will lead him to Violet

Reyes scowled around the rim of the coffee cup Keema handed him. Their last seven interrogations hadn't yielded results other than what they already knew from Violet's investigation. They had a bunch of pieces of an elaborate puzzle, none of which fit together, much less gave them an idea about the big picture. They stood outside the square, windowless room being used to question the people Keema brought in, taking a break between interrogations. Rather than bringing in his usual people who asked hard questions, he decided to do them all himself. This was too important to delegate.

“We aren't getting anywhere with this.” He checked the time. “Violet has been missing for thirteen hours and we have no leads. The only thing we do know is that the Hunt has a massive dossier on how the Collective runs.”

His people had been tapped mostly for blackmail, but also to use for the Hunt’s oblivion distribution. Reyes found himself personally offended by it all, considering how similar of a tactic it was to his own. Half of his move to usurp Sloane had been built on blackmail and using her people to unwittingly conduct his business, and now this Huntmaster had the audacity to do it to him. Keema had a half a dozen assistants whipping out new orders around Kadara Port and delivered to the badlands, switching personnel up, changing information streams, and reshuffling their entire organization. The Huntmaster knew too much. They had access to too much. 

The angara next to him fiddled with a datapad, her attention split on the interrogations in front of them and the Collective overhaul. 

“We need a better plan,” he sighed, sipping his coffee.

“What are you thinking?”

“How do we usually win, Keema?”

“You outmaneuver your enemies. Usually because they underestimate you and because you don’t play by the rules. You cheat.”

He tapped the side of his cup with his fingers. “Yes. We cheat. How do we cheat at the Huntmaster's game?” The question lingered between them unanswered for a long minute while he sipped his coffee. “Get hold of the team on the  _ Tempest _ . Pass them everything we have.”

“You want to compare notes with the Initiative?”

“I don't care whether they give us anything in return. They have resources we don't. Avitus landed and hour ago, so they have the benefit of a SAM. Grant them access to whatever they want.” 

“Some of the information we have contains secrets,” she warned. 

“I don’t care. This is about winning. Besides, you’re changing things so the Hunt can’t use those secrets against us. Once we resettle, neither will the Initiative.” He drained the rest of his coffee and banished the cobwebs from his mind. “Anything else before I go back in there?” 

“Dr. Nakamoto got back to me about what we talked about yesterday. He has several recipe variations for us to try, but he thinks one of them will hit close to what you’re after. He also had some...choice words...to say about the Charlatan for forcing him to do this.” 

“I can imagine,” he grunted. “Set up teams for trial testing of each variation. Get the oblivion manufacturers on it to crank out what they need for testing and halt regular production in the meantime. Have them determine the best recipe. If one does what we want it to do, start producing in mass ASAP. If one is viable, send Dr. Nakamoto his dossier to destroy as he sees fit. If not...we’ll have him try again.” 

It was a long term solution and not likely to help Violet anytime soon, so he returned his focus to the issues in front of him. He squared himself up before entering through the door into their makeshift interrogation room. It only had a table and two chairs and nothing else other than a camera fixed in the corner that Keema could observe through. None of the previous interrogations had been too rough, but the table bore result of a few punches spattered across its surface.

A skinny, twitchy little man sat across from him, bottom lip red from where he had nervously gnawed on it. He studied Reyes curiously from his seat, eyes darting around. 

“George Timmons,” he said curtly, leaning back in the metal chair across from him and kicking out his legs, setting his cup of coffee between them. Its fragrance reminded him of Violet. “You know who I am?”

“Smuggler, right? Ryan something?” 

“Reyes.” 

“Right. Yeah. I’ve seen you around Tartarus. Somebody mentioned you run a solid operation. You moonlight as interrogator for the Collective?” He winced as if he regretted his weak stab at humor as soon as it came out. 

He leveled his gaze on the man. “You know why I’m here?”

“No.” 

“What do you know about the Hunt?” 

George’s left eye twitched and he glanced quickly away. “What kind of hunt do you mean?” 

Leaning forward, Reyes folded his hands on the table, his tone low and tightly controlled. “As much as I would love to let you sweat there and wonder what I know, I don’t have a lot of time to do this. Let’s make a deal, shall we? You’re a savvy man, aren’t you, George? Know a good deal when you see one? Now, either you tell me every time the Huntmaster has contacted you, what you told him or did for him, and any other interesting factoids you might be holding onto, and I won’t bury you alive in the middle of the badlands.” 

“I swear. I don’t know nothing. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

His hand came down on the table hard enough to make the coffee cup jump. “The Hunt, George! The fucking Hunt! I know you pulled jobs for it, and I know because Ulenna T’karr told me fifteen minutes ago that you and she used to make oblivion deliveries together on the Huntmaster’s orders.” At his widened eyes, he said, “Yeah, Ulenna took the deal. She’s going home tonight to her family rather than disappearing into an unmarked grave in the middle of nowhere. Now, I want dates, I want times, and I want every single footfall you made while running those jobs.” 

“I...I don’t know…” he whispered. 

“So fucking help me, George, I’m going to start taking body parts if you don’t drop your bullshit!”

Reyes didn’t want to turn his own people against him and the Collective by interrogating them this way, but he didn’t have the luxury of gathering the information more subtly. He had to take a chapter from Violet’s book and hammer his way to the truth along the shortest possible trajectory. He would always prefer to work slowly, methodically, coming at problems sideways. Today, he shoved aside the Charlatan and channeled his inner pathfinder. 

“I can’t,” the man finally gasped out, shaking visibly in his seat. “If the Huntmaster knew I talked...” 

“You’re going to wish you faced whatever blackmail he has on you if you stand in my way for one more minute,” he snarled. 

“He’s got my son!”

Reyes fell back, recalculating his odds of getting him to spill his secrets. “What do you mean, he’s got your son?” 

“I mean. Not physically. But he’s...he’s a hacker. You have to know that by now, right? He’s in the Nexus datastreams, more of them than they know. More than I even know. He’s got access to cryopods. If I don’t do what he says, if I...if I  _ talk _ about anything I’ve done...he’ll shut down life support.” 

A chill ran down Reyes’s spine, but he pushed on. “Do you really think they’re going to assemble enough of your pieces for you to ever help your son after I’m through with you?” 

“I can’t tell you anything.” Tears cut down his cheeks. “I can’t.” 

“I’m only going to ask you one more time,” he warned, standing up so sharply his chair toppled onto its side.

Before he could make any more threats, a sharp rap sounded on the door. 

“What?” he barked. 

Keema poked her head in. “There’s a call for you.”

“Take a message.”

“ It’s important. I would take it now.” 

He jammed his hair back with his fingers and stormed out of the interrogation room where George slumped in momentary relief. Reyes would have to call in someone more proficient at these type of interrogations anyway. The others hadn’t had as high of stakes to protect, but George might take the Hunt’s secrets to the grave with him. He knew it would take more than a strong bluff to get what he wanted.

Keema led him to a nearby boardroom where the meeting table broadcast the holocall and left him alone with it. He took an extra moment to compose himself before stepping up to the table. After a calming breath, he released the call from hold and the luminescent frame of a krogan popped into view across from him. The rugged bastard was about the oldest breathing thing in Andromeda and Violet adored him from his scarred up face to his synthetic organs. Drack, in return, loved her and hated Reyes, an opinion he had never been quiet about. 

“To what do I owe the honor?” he asked blandly, itching to get back to what he was doing. 

The krogan fixed him with his steely, unnerving gaze. “I’ve got some information you might be able to help us shed some light on. Ryder has me tracking down arms of the Hunt here on the Nexus. I stumbled into one of their ongoing plots this morning, ruining it for everyone involved. I think you’ll be interested in what they had going on.” 

He gestured for the old warrior to go on. 

“Luhana Serna. She was arrested with you here on the Nexus for your drug smuggling shitball.” 

“I recall.” 

“I foiled her escape plan today. An escape plan I’d wager you know nothing about.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why would she need an escape plan? She’s being released into my custody next week.” He fell silent, his jaw clacking together. “The Huntmaster orchestrated it.” 

“What I thought. She’s not talking, but for her to be on her way out the door seemed odd for someone about to be freed anyway.” 

“Luhana has been batting for the Collective for, shit, over two years now. She’s always been loyal. I trusted her.” He scraped a hand down his face, brain rattling around to make sense of everything. “I need you to send her to me. I’ll find out everything she knows.” 

“While I don’t doubt you, kid, we’re on a time crunch. I’d like to do the interrogation myself. I just want to make sure the Charlatan isn’t going to get pissy at me for roughing up one of his.” 

“The Initiative has strong feelings about how interrogations should be conducted. No. Send her to me. We need this done right.” 

Drack’s craggy face pleated into a wide grin. “For once, I actually agree with you. Which is why I didn’t inform anyone with the Initiative that she’s in my custody. I’ll hand her back over once we know what she knows.” 

Reyes had to give himself pause, first to process that Drack had no qualms circumventing Initiative law, and second, to consider the ramifications. He’d known Luhana a long time. She wasn’t just a contact of the Collective, but a contact of Reyes the Smuggler’s. He reran events over in his head, the details revealing themselves in their snaking, twisted paths. Under other circumstances, he might have been impressed.

“I get it.” He laughed darkly, dropping his head into his hand for a moment to shake. “Son of a bitch. Who knows how long she’s been on the Huntmaster’s payroll? I brought the oblivion on board the Nexus to destroy the Huntmaster’s business there. Can’t tell you whether she volunteered the information or the Huntmaster recruited her, but someone ratted me out and I bet you anything she went down knowing the Huntmaster planned on springing her. They preserve the Huntmaster’s oblivion monopoly on the Nexus and I get locked up.” 

Drack nodded and grunted along. “Yeah,” the old man rumbled. “Sounds like that fits. I’ll get confirmation and see what else she knows.”

He cringed thinking of spunky little Luhana in the hands of a pissed off, highly motivated krogan, but then again, he wanted the information and he wanted it now. After mulling it over, he jerked a quick nod. “Get whatever information from her you can squeeze out. Do be aware, she might have been blackmailed into doing it. Either way, do whatever it takes. Have you debriefed the rest of the  _ Tempest’s _ crew?” 

“I find it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission in these situations.”

He snorted. “Maybe you and I aren’t so different after all.”

“Don’t count on it, kid.”

“Let me know when you find out.”

“Count on it. And kid? We’re getting her back.” 

Reyes nodded tersely, but held up a hand before they could cut the call. “I have some information of my own. I was going to pass it onto the team, but it’s more relevant to you. I can’t confirm how true it is just yet, but the Huntmaster has hacked into at least some of the cryopods and is threatening to cut life support to people’s family members in exchange for cooperation. I have a George Timmons in my interrogation room claiming the Huntmaster will kill his son if he talks to me.” 

“I’ll look into it. If the kid exists, we’ll pull him from cryo for safekeeping and see if that doesn’t get your Timmons talking faster.” Drack nodded to him. “Anything else?” 

He ground his molars together, avoiding the old man’s stern gaze. He had one thing more, but it might be a risk. He knew he claimed he would sacrifice anyone if it meant getting Violet back. The odds were high he had been betrayed further, but again, maybe not. 

“What do you know, Reyes? Because if you hold something back that could help us get to Ryder...”

“My job I pulled on the Nexus. Luhana Serna was my contact for distribution, but I had someone else helping get the product on board, a hacker who was supposed to shut down surveillance of the dock I landed on. Where I got caught.” 

Gayle wasn’t one of his people, although they worked together on occasion. They were partners in business, and in his line of work, you didn’t throw your partners under the bus. Not if you enjoyed breathing. 

“Give me a name,” Drack growled. 

His eyes dropped closed and he exhaled. “I only have a first name. She goes by Gayle. Human female. Early sixties. You have the surveillance video of when I walked around the Nexus before pulling my job?” 

“I’ll get it.” 

“She met me briefly while I was overlooking hydroponics. We chatted for about a minute. If she hasn’t scrubbed herself from the images, she’ll be there. And you absolutely did not get her name from me,” he added. 

He shrugged. “We’ll see about that.”

Reyes knew it was as good as he was going to get from Drack. The krogan ended the call to get back to work, leaving him alone in the meeting room.

He settled his hands onto the table in front of him, dropping his head with a long sigh. Worry corroded his insides, eating through his organs. By logic, he knew Violet had a talent for wiggling out of fatal situations, but the radio silence on her end haunted him. If she lived, SAM would have checked in. The  _ Tempest _ crew promised that they would know if she died--something about Avery inheriting SAM, but they also admitted that things could delay that from happening, as with Avitus Rix and his predecessor, Macen Barro. 

A little kernel of anger reared out of his fear. Old resentment. A familiar, deeply buried thought about how much he  _ hated _ Violet's job. The pathfinders were necessary. He appreciated them. But he hated how much danger she threw herself at--and how much danger sought her out in return. He knew she was competent and strong and all of those things that made her so goddamn tough to kill, but he couldn't stamp down the visceral rage that accompanied these situations where her life was in jeopardy for the good of the system--again.

It took Reyes a few extra minutes to swallow the fear and anger twisting him up. 

Keema entered eventually, placing a soothing hand on his shoulder. “We will find her.”

“It's probably not even necessary. She'll get herself out before we even get to her.” He straightened and turned to the angara. “Luhana Serna is part of the Hunt. She's very likely our double-crosser on the Nexus. I also threw Drack at Gayle. She’s a hacker, much like our Huntmaster.”

Her starry eyes widened. “Is that what Drack called about?”

“He's hunting the Hunt on the Nexus. He wanted my permission to question Luhana...more thoroughly.”

Her lip curled slightly and she emitted a disgusted noise. “Like Initiative interrogation practices will yield any results.”

“Drack didn't report that he has her to the Initiative.” He let the implications linger between them as she nodded her understanding. 

“Say what you want about Violet, but she does inspire an unsettling degree of loyalty among the people closest to her,” the angara mused.

He almost smiled at that. “She does.” He considered what they were going to do about George Timmons. “I’m also having Drack see if he can find Timmons’ son to pull from cryo. As my mother used to say, you catch more pyjaks with honey than vinegar.” 

Keema took his hand and sent a soothing, little bioelectric tingle into his palm. “Does that mean we must wait until Drack gets back to us?” 

“Shit. I can’t wait. Not with Violet out there. Who else do we have to interrogate?” 

“That’s all for now.” 

“Fine. Did you send what we had so far to the  _ Tempest _ ?” 

She nodded. “I did.” 

“Then I’ll touch bases with them and Avitus and see if they’ve made any progress.” Patience used to be one of Reyes’s best--perhaps only--virtues, but he couldn’t imagine sitting down and sitting still with Violet out there on her own. 

Keema didn’t seem so impressed with his plan. “They will just tell you to go back to your house arrest.”

“And I will tell them to fuck themselves and then we’ll all be too busy to actually make it happen. Call me if any of our people turn up anything interesting.” 

“You should take this opportunity to rest.” 

He laughed at her until she smacked him. 

“Shut up. I wasn’t joking,” she fumed. 

“I’ll rest when either Violet’s alive or I’m dead.” He gave Keema a quick peck on the cheek in appreciation for her worry and turned his attention to his omni-tool to get in touch with the  _ Tempest’s _ crew and make them tell him everything they knew. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The alternative name for this entire fic is, "The Story Where Reyes Constantly Tries to Get the Tempest Crew to Share Information With Him But Nobody Trusts Him For Good Reason"
> 
> the plot twist is when Drack is inexplicably the one who decides he wants to deal. xD


	16. Crossroads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet discovers more about the tunnels she's trapped in and the secrets they hold

“I’m not wearing this.”

 _“No,”_ SAM agreed, a little dejected.

“Come on, bro. You couldn’t have taken a shit earlier in the day?” she griped.

Violet and SAM spent hours stumbling through the dark tunnels, hitting dead ends and going in circles. She’d collected a dozen bruises and only encountered a single other person, who now lay at her feet with a broken neck. The man had decided to douse his flashlight and duke it out in pitch blackness. Unable to see him and at the bigger disadvantage, she used a pulse of her biotics, but gave it a teensy bit too much oomph. He hit a nearby wall head first, then promptly shit his pants upon death, leaving her stranded in her ridiculous toga.

At least now she had a flashlight. No omni-tool. No comm. No technology except for a single, battery powered torch and a paper notebook.

“We’re in a techphobic cult. That’s what’s happening here, right?” She used the flashlight to peek through the notebook. It contained a bunch of numbers and sums. The man had been keeping track of kilos and credits.

_“They had machines to help with their attempt to remove your implant.”_

“True.” She swung the flashlight around the tunnel. “Pity he didn’t have a hamburger on him. I could use a bite to eat.”

_“Would you like to know the odds, given predictable models, of him having a hamburger on his person?”_

She snorted. “You tallied the odds?”

_“I’m bored. I can’t even scan our surroundings and analyze the geological makeup of these caves.”_

“They’re lava tubes. I’m pretty sure all the rocks are the same brand.”

Tucking the notebook into the strap of her toga for safekeeping, she bent to steal the man’s boots, getting them off and glancing them over with a critical eye. They looked like they might fit Avery comfortably. She put one on anyway, sighing in disappointment. She would end up tripping all over them. They were useless. Except, maybe, as bludgeons.

“Tell me one thing, SAM. Are the odds higher that he would have a pizza or a hamburger?”

 _“Hamburger,”_ he replied without hesitation. _“Which is only slightly lower than the odds of him being in possession of a burrito.”_

With her newly acquired flashlight to guide her, she started back down the lava tube. “What about coffee?”

_“There was a zero percent chance he had coffee on him.”_

“What? How was it more likely for him to have a burrito than a cup of coffee?”

_“You would find the odds of him having coffee, but not actually having any, discouraging. I was trying to keep your spirits up.”_

“Yeah, we're going to need to work on that.”

As she got going again, she regretted not getting footwear out of the last guy. Her feet were too accustomed to being pampered in high quality combats or at least some plushy house slippers around the _Tempest_. Her toes were tender. The masses who all thought she was an indestructible badass would be so disappointed. They'd gone a bit numb from the cold and the battering they took against the uneven ground, but she didn't find that encouraging. She hoped SAM monitored for frostbite.

Grumping her way down the tunnel, she reflected that the dead man behind her had to have come from somewhere, giving her some hope that she wasn't wandering down some random branch of the lava tube.

When she arrived at juncture and two-way split, she used the flashlight to study the ground, discovering footprints emerging from both of them.

“Left or right, SAM?”

_“Right.”_

“Okay, right we go.”

The cave narrowed, forcing her to crouch as they walked along. She still knocked her head into a few low hanging ridges, adding to her collection of bruises.

Just as the tunnel began to widen, her stomach let out a ferocious growl that echoed off the stone walls. It was so startlingly loud that she worried everyone in the entire cave system would probably hear it and come running to recapture her. She froze, her stomach making little, plaintive noises afterward.

“So much for sneaking. Hey, speaking of which, you said I was dehydrated. Is that going to be an issue sooner or later?”

_“I can keep you going for another twenty-four hours before it becomes an immanent issue.”_

“I can get a lot accomplished in twenty-four hours.”

Flexing her numb toes, trying to get feeling back into them, she pressed forward, following the clear definition of boot prints in the ground with her flashlight, feeling better knowing that people had, at least at some point, passed this way.

Violet heard voices and before she saw any light. Clicking her flashlight off, her heart jumping excitedly, she edged forward down the tunnel until she caught the faint glow of light at the other end. The tube curved around, giving her cover as she approached a brilliantly lit cave. It opened up into a vast cavern dripping with stalactites. Floodlights occupied the corners and we're strung from the ceiling. She had to pause to let her eyes adjust to the sudden brilliance.

There were three additional other tunnel entrances that she could see and over a dozen individuals occupying the room. She crouched in the black tunnel near the wall, confident that no one could see her against the swallowing backdrop. She counted six armed guards--two turian, two krogan, one human, one salarian--and eighteen unarmed angaran workers. The workers drew her eye, as they wore ragged patches for clothes. The cold wouldn't bother them, but their colors were dull and their bodies thin and weak. If she had to guess, they uniformly suffered from sunlight deficiency. Angara biology relied on electromagnetic radiation. These folks were all “going dark,” as Jaal put it. How long had they been down in the cave? Why had no one gotten them a UV lamp?

The neglected angara were clustered around tables and machines. It didn’t take her long to recognize the production line’s purpose, having seen and shut down others similar to it. They were refining and packaging oblivion.

“Oh hell no,” she whispered as her stomach dropped. “Tell me those are not slaves working this party.”

 _“They are wearing some kind of electronic collar,”_ SAM pointed out.

Her jaw clamped together with enough force to give her a headache. Developing and distributing drugs was one thing. Manipulating people and the subterfuge was another. But slaves, robbed of sunlight and free will--that crossed a line.

She crouched in the tunnel long enough for her legs to fall asleep and her back to start aching as she worked through plans to disable and disarm all six guards without putting the angara in danger, but when bullets started flying, she couldn't guarantee anyone's safety.

“I can't do it.” She slammed her fist down on her thigh, nails biting into her palm. “I can't get all six without being willing to sacrifice the angarans in the middle. If I had a gun on me…”

_“Do you see the packaging table? If you crouch at the end, you can speak to the angara standing on either side while not being in eyeline of the guards.”_

“Recon,” she sighed. It didn't feel like enough, but she needed information and allies. She wanted to kick some ass and murder a bloody swath to the Huntmaster where she would personally disembowel the son of a bitch, but she had to play her cards carefully. She had every disadvantage working against her. She couldn’t just rush in, guns blazing, like she would have liked.

The table end might sit in a blind spot, but the area in between didn't, making getting into position an impossibility without some kind of interference or distraction. She settled in to wait and watch, stewing in her rising levels of wrath.

She sat there about hour, lurking in the shadows and waiting for her moment, only moving enough that her limbs didn't cramp. Her stomach gurgled a bit more, but the cave had enough movement and voices bouncing around that it didn't betray her. After an agonizing stretch of patience, her moment came when a seventh armed guard entered with a cart of food and coffee for the others. They beelined to him and, once she got over her outrage that they got to eat and caffeinate, she bolted to the packaging table, keeping low and her head down and skidding across the rough ground, taking off a few layers of skin on her knees and palms to get there.

“What the…!” one of the angara jumped visibly and the other dropped a package of oblivion. Others caught her mad dash to the table and craned their heads to see what was going on.

“Shh! Shh! I'm here to help. Act casual,” she whispered in frantic Shelesh, grateful for Jaal for helping her learn. She hadn’t wanted to rely on translators, just in case something like this happened and she got caught without technology to interface.

“Who are you? What is this?” the older woman to her left whispered.

“My name is Violet Ryder. I'm the human pathfinder.”

They stared blankly.

“I was also taken prisoner here. I’m working on an escape,” she added.

The woman sneered. “You are _Milky Way_. If they want you, they can have you.”

“Now that I know you all are here, I'm not leaving without you. I can help. I just need information.”

“You are an invader. A pest. I don't care whether you all kill each other.”

“No, not at all! I'm a settler. The people who took you are criminals. I will bury all of them, but I can't do it alone.”

“First the kett, now the Milky Ways. You kill us and take what we have.”

It took everything in her to keep her voice low with its rising level of urgency. “No, I swear. The alliance between the angara and Initiative has gone so well! With the Archon gone and the worlds healing, there is room for all of us.”

The angara woman froze, her eyes darting to the guards, then back to Violet. “The Archon is...gone?”

She looked at their anxious, sunken faces. “Yes, for a year now. I killed him myself. The kett are being driven out. How...how long have you been down here?”

“Here? Months. I lost count. Before that, a kett labor camp. That is where the Master took us from. We have been used and passed around for...so long.”

“Shit,” she murmured. “You have no reason to trust me. Okay, the short version. The Milky Way settlers are working with the angara. I freed Moshae Sjefa. The angara and my people worked together to kill the Archon and drive out the kett. We've also found a way to improve planet conditions. They're more habitable than ever. I'm here right now to shut all of this down and stop the criminals who have taken you prisoner. The Huntmaster brought me here because he wants something from me. I'm going to make him hurt for it and I am _not_ leaving here without the rest of you.”

“You could go get help,” the angara man on the right side of the table whispered. “That tunnel just over there leads to the surface. You can get out.”

She followed the point of his gaze to the far side of the tunnel, shocked to find the exit suddenly within reach. She could sprint the distance and probably make it out before the guards realized what they were seeing.

Glancing back at the man, she asked, “How many more of you are down here?”

“This is one of two processing rooms. Then there is the garden. There are close to sixty prisoners working.”

Violet dragged her hand down her face. “How many guards?”

“Too many. Far too many. Please, if you are who you say you are, just go get help. Tell our people where we are,” the man pleaded.

“What about your collars? What do those do?”

“They keep us in our areas. Even if we ran, we would never escape the net.”

Violet could infer how they worked. She couldn't say for certain, but she guessed they functioned on the angaran's bioelectric fields in some way, keeping them corralled. She didn't need the specifics, she just had to find the source connecting them and shut it down.

 _“What do you think?”_ SAM asked.

“If I leave, the Huntmaster knows I have his location. He'll pack up shop and be in the wind before I can get my crew to us, especially if it takes us a while to establish connection.” She glanced between the gaunt faces on either side of her, her stomach sinking. “If I leave, I risk you all disappearing.”

“What can you do for us? Can you disable the guards? Are you even armed?” the woman hissed.

“It's a work in progress,” she admitted.

“So you are doomed and we are exactly where we have always been.”

“Just save yourself,” the man urged. “You'll get killed if you stay. Get help and come back for us. Please.”

 _“We are severely disadvantaged,”_ SAM pointed out grimly.

“We do not leave people behind.”

_“You are unarmed, you are dehydrated, you have no shoes, and you're barely clothed. This may not be a fight you can win.”_

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

“Who are you talking to?” the angara woman whispered.

“Huh? Oh. My AI. He doesn’t have an mic to interface with, so he’s just in my head right now.” At their doubting expressions, she said, “It’s why the Huntmaster is after me. She wants to pull out my implant and part of my brain. Which I don’t have time to explain. Where do these other tunnels lead?”

The one behind the guards is one people use quite a lot, but none of the prisoners has been down it, so we don’t know what’s back there. The one over there goes to the other refinement stations and garden.”

To SAM, she murmured, “Our Huntmaster is a hacker. If this is her base of operation, she must have a computer bank somewhere. I bet it’s in the same place that holds the key to the collars. My money is--”

“What the hell?”

A loud voice boomed around the cave, catching all of their attentions. The guards had gotten their snacks and coffee and disseminated. One of them, either by providence or drawn by something unusual about the workers, had circled to get a better view and now stared in confusion over at her.

Violet didn’t have time to think. She had access to two tunnels--the one that led out to freedom, and the one leading to the other refinement and packaging rooms. Leaving the prisoners behind never entered her mind as she sprang for the other one.

“Who the fuck is that?”

“Where did she come from?”

Guns cracked as they decided they didn’t care and opened fire on her anyway. Violet turned on her flashlight to keep from smashing against any of the walls as she hurtled into the tunnel, even though it gave them an easy target to follow. She kept ahead of the guards, acquiring enough bends in between that she could hear them and see sprinklings of light over her shoulder when she looked back, but otherwise had the lead.

The lava tube dumped her into a bulb with another fork. She didn’t have time to check the floor for footprints, so she picked one at random and started down. This one brought her to another fork. Again, she picked her direction at random until she could stop, turning off her flashlight to watch and listen.

“I think we got away,” she huffed, doubled over onto her knees, a stitch developing in her side.

_“That is good news. Especially because you were shot.”_

“What? No I wasn’t.”

_“The bullet is lodged underneath your rib cage on the left side.”_

“I think I would have noticed if--ow! Fuck! Son of a bitch!” she swore, her hand slapping to her her “stitch” as it bloomed into something more akin to agony. “Is it bad?”

_“Well…”_

“Am I dying, SAM?” she demanded impatiently.

_“You got shot. That’s never good. But no major vessels were hit and it didn’t tear up any organs. However, on the plus side, at least we now know that your adrenaline response is back to one hundred percent.”_

“Yeah, because that’s _really_ what I care about right now!” She wadded up her toga around the area and applied pressure to the spot, a sweat breaking out all over her body. “We need a new plan.”

_“That is apparent.”_

“We have around sixty prisoners to free.”

_“Perhaps it would be smarter to attempt to escape the cave and call for help.”_

She chewed her bottom lip, thunking her head back against the tunnel wall. “Or…”

_“Really, Violet. I think this situation calls for putting your self-preservation as your top priority.”_

“Forget about that. The plan I was starting to get to before we were interrupted and they so rudely shot me still has merit. We find out what’s in that tunnel the prisoners weren’t sure about. My hunch says, if the Huntmaster has any tech stored, it’s there. We break in, we free the prisoners, and we use whatever we find to boost our signal and call the cavalry in.”

_“How do you plan on getting past the guards?”_

She eased some of the pressure off of her side with a hiss. “By becoming one. We’re going to need bait and a willing victim.”

_“For the record, I do not like this plan. If the team were her to take bets, I would not want in on it.”_

She clicked her flashlight back on and started back the way she came, since it was clear they hadn’t been followed, hand pressed firmly to her side. She’d been shot before. Hell, she’d been blown up before. Pain, she could handle. There was still a job to do.

“You didn’t learn that pessimism from me. That’s some Alec bullshit.”

If SAM had any further opinions, he kept them to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The more injuries Violet accumulates, the worse her plans get. Somebody stop her. xDDD


	17. Blank Spaces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reyes plays nice with the pathfinding team to compare notes about the Hunt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a short one, but we're rolling toward the conclusion, if you all can believe it!

The Collective had never hosted an Initiative party quite so large, but with Violet missing, it was all hands on deck. They clustered in the room Sloane once used as her throne room, which Keema used for larger gatherings and meetings. Keema, her assistant, a salarian named Pol, and Reyes were the only Collective representatives. Avery, Cora, Vetra, Peebee, and Jaal were there from the  _ Tempest _ and Avitus Rix and two of his crew, a krogan named Trip, and a human named Effie, had arrived so they had a pathfinder on hand. They also had Drack and the head of Nexus security, Tiran Kandros on the holo. Reyes itched having so many Initiative law enforcement crowded in his space, but they had teamed up for the same purpose. Get Violet. Find and destroy the Huntmaster.

They clustered around a workstation that contained maps of the system and planets clustered with pinpoints of confirmed Hunt moves, color coded for relevance. They also had still images of individuals that they wanted for questioning, including Gayle. They'd pulled the security image from the Nexus files. She stood in her meeting with Reyes near Hydroponics, leaned against the rail where they chatted.

Other images of other suspects came from around the system, with every single outpost and settlement going over their operations with a fine toothed comb for evidence of the Hunt's interference. They believed that the Huntmaster built his game on oblivion and expanded from there. Each settlement had been treating their drug problems as unique to them, never realizing the systemic issue that connected it all. From there, guns, goods, and blackmail all fell into the twisting pathways of the Hunt. It touched everything. 

Reyes hated it and respected it. They had somehow managed to do what he tried to do, but do it better. 

“How's house arrest going?” Kandros asked before they got started.

“Other than someone sending in a hit squad to murder me in my sleep and burning my apartment down to escape them, swimmingly.”

“We put the fire out before it destroyed much. You have a deep charred kitchen and a singed couch. You could go back,” Peebee pointed out blandly.

“I'm going to have to pass.”

Avitus cut in before they could snark off any further. “With Ryder MIA, it's my job to enforce the Initiative's interests, not any of yours.” For a beat, they all waited for him to say more, but he didn't, turning his attention back to the information laid out in front of them and making it clear that he didn't intend on doing any “enforcing” today.

Reyes had always liked Avitus. 

“Let's get started,” Drack rumbled. “I want to begin with Luhana Serna.” He pulled up her mugshot for all to see. Reyes experienced a twinge of anger that made his eye twitch. “From what we've been able to extract from her, she isn't a fly caught in the Hunt's web, but a volunteer player. She's been throwing the Collective and Initiative under the bus for months and the Hunt has made her rich for it. She happily sold out Reyes when she got the chance. The plan was to pinch him, undercut the Collective's plan to establish an oblivion brand on the Nexus, and then she was going to take her money and retire on a beach somewhere. We've seized her accounts and between getting paid by Reyes and paid by the Huntmaster, and probably moonlighting as fuck knows what else, she was sitting real pretty. The only thing she doesn't realize is who Reyes is. She knows he's on the upper tiers of the Collective's payroll. She didn't predict Keema would spring him.”

Reyes didn't put it past Luhana to now suspect that he was the Charlatan. If she hadn’t come to it yet, it wouldn't be long. 

“We’ve been trying to pry any more useful information from her, anything she might remember from all of her interactions with the Huntmaster,” Drack continued, his eyes drifting to Reyes, who nodded his support. 

“She's all yours,” he growled.

“I'll give you whatever pieces are left when I'm done.”

“Appreciated, friend.”

He resisted the urge to smirk as the others shifted uncomfortably, unsure whether they were joking or not, and probably even more disconcerted that the two of them were on the same page for the very first time in known history. Violet would hate to have missed it.

“Next thing, we're still tracking the hacker Vidal used for the job with Luhana. Only known alias is ‘Gayle.’” The picture of Gayle and Reyes magnified, both of them leaned against the rail out of earshot of anyone around them. “The only thing we know is that she's good at covering her tracks and scrubbing herself from databases. We're lucky to have gotten this picture before she did. Pathfinder Hayjer has volunteered to chase down leads, so we're waiting on his investigation to go further with that. Cora?” he prompted, passing the discussion off to her. 

Cora nodded and brought up a picture of a turian. “August Bradley in Prodromos wants to find and question this individual, Ditra Essto. Through his investigation, his people believe she had a higher level of coordinating Hunt events on Eos…”

They went on, tracing leads and trying to find connections. They didn't actually have much, although they wrung every drip of optimism out of each step in any direction they made. He read the worry and determination in their faces. Funny, but as they gained hope from the meeting at having made progress, Reyes could only feel pissed that they hadn't made enough. Pissed that he had been betrayed. Pissed that someone was leading them all around by the nose. Reyes didn't want to play the game, but he did want to win it.

He glanced back at the image of him standing next to Gayle, straining his memory for anything he could pass off to Hayjer to speed up finding her, going through their conversation word by word. She had wanted to know how he pissed off Ryder to get himself banned from Initiative property. She worried about the pathfinders, but he assured her they were all busy. He’d already set up goose chases for all of them. They’d pitched their voices too low to be overheard, not that it mattered with no one standing around them except for a group of salarians and angarans bickering over something off to their left.

Reyes cocked his head, his heart slamming to a standstill. 

“Drack, Kandros!” he barked, interrupting something Avery was saying. “Do you have the full video of when I met with Gayle there?” 

“Yes,” Kandros confirmed hesitantly. 

“Pull it up and run it back to the beginning of when she approached.” 

They fidgeted with controls on their end and finally pulled the file. In the video, Gayle approached from the left and slid into the space on Reyes’s right.

“Holy shit,” he breathed, watching them talk quietly for a minute before Gayle departed. 

Jaal made a grumpy noise. “What? I do not see anything.” 

“Exactly.” He stabbed his finger at the screen. “I’m not standing next to anybody in this video.” Before they could ask any stupid questions, he blurted, “There was a young asari standing directly to my right. When Gayle approached, she slid between her and me, but the asari was standing there the whole time. That’s why we’re talking angled away like that. So where the fuck is the asari?” 

For a beat, nobody moved or breathed. Kandros left the screen, his sharp voice elevated as he barked orders to find Pathfinder Hayjer and have him meet him in security. 

“Gayle didn’t even have time to scrub herself from these records. How the hell did the asari do it?” Peebee asked. 

“Our Huntmaster is a master hacker. Maybe he--she?--was already in there. Maybe they already had a backdoor in to erase themselves,” Avery ventured.

Reyes’s eyes bored through the images in front of him, as if he could will the missing asari back into existence. 

Looking around at their faces, Peebee asked, “But why was she there? If she was working for the Huntmaster, why put her there where she could...stand near the deal...or whatever.”

“The Hunt’s a game,” he murmured. “It’s a game she’s winning. Maybe she wanted to be close to the action before it all went down. She wanted to see her work in play. And maybe it’s more. We know she wants me dead with that attack squad she sent to my house. Maybe she’s got it in for me and she just wanted to look me in the eye before she got the Nexus to put me away.” He thought about their small interaction. He’d approached with his potato-like snack. He’d winked, and that seemed to please her immensely. She spent the rest of the time peeking glances at him.

“You think she’s the Huntmaster?” Liam didn’t give him a chance to answer. “We taking bets on that?” 

Nobody took the odds. Reyes knew what his gut told him, and from the sour expressions around him, the others had similar feelings. The asari, a quiet, unnoticeable bystander, had erased her entire existence from Nexus computers. Gayle edit some databases, but even she had her limits. 

Kandros returned with Hayjer a few minutes later, the pathfinder fluttering excitedly as he pulled up a new screen for them all to see. 

“We found her. My SAM found where she had scrambled our tech to erase herself out. Not something you notice unless you’re looking, but she left us a trail of corrupted data. We followed that back from when she first stepped foot on the Nexus. She’s sneaky, yes, and we’ll never decrypt the code she used to erase her face, but she didn’t account for one thing.” 

The picture was slightly distorted and tinted red, but it contained an image of a face. 

“Reflections,” Hayjer announced smugly. “Is this your asari, Mr. Vidal?” 

He studied the youthful features of the woman on the screen. “That’s my asari. Do we know anything else about her?” 

“We do. She appears to have docked on transport out of Kadara Port. We have the name of the ship and crew manifest. Forwarding the information now.”

More than one person made gestures of victory. Liam pumped his fist, Peebee did a little jump, Avery folded his arms with a dangerous gleam to his eyes. Reyes didn’t react. It was too soon to celebrate. 

“We’ll take it from here.” To Keema, he said, “Run the name of the ship and crew and find out exactly who we’re dealing with. Also, disseminate the picture of our alleged Huntmaster to every single person in port and offer an outrageous reward for information leading to her. I don’t give a shit if it bankrupts us. Find someone who knows who she is and where to find her.” 

“I think I can manage to put something together without bleeding our credits,” she snorted. “Pol, why aren't you taking this down?”

Her assistant had his gaze fixed on his datapad. “I know who runs this ship. I know the captain, Keelin Kay.”

Reyes’s stomach performed a series of acrobatics. They were close and closing in. They were going to find her. “How do we approach them for information?”

He hesitated. “Well, there is one thing she has a bit of an...obsession with. Or, rather, someone. She'd sell her own mother for a meet-and-greet. Better yet, a candlelit dinner.”

“Who?”

He shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “Evfra de Tershaav.”

“You want to pimp out the leader of the angaran armed forces I exchange for intel?” Liam scoffed. “Evfra barely puts up with Ryder, and only because she didn’t give him a choice.”

“I will call him. I will appeal to his sense of honor,” Jaal offered stoically.

Reyes already had a line open on his omni-tool. Few people had Evfra's direct contact information, but he spent months selling information to the Resistance and cultivated a carefully respectful business relationship with the surly old Resistance leader.

He answered eventually. “Make it quick, Vidal, I'm busy.”

“Evfra. I'm calling in a favor. You're going to hate it.”

A beleaguered sigh echoed through the mic as everyone around Reyes drew in and held their breaths. 

“How much am I going to hate it?”

“A lot. But you remember that time when you needed the thing in the place with the one person and I pulled through for you?”

“Oh shit. Bets on whether Reyes and Evfra have pounded it out?” Peebee hissed behind him. 

Vetra snorted. “Nah. Never happened.”

“Fifty credits?”

“You're on.”

Reyes ignored them. “You owe me, Evfra.”

“Fine. What is it you need?”

“I'm going to extort someone in exchange for a romantic evening with you.”

“No.”

“Yeah? And who would you have gone to when you were desperate? I did things for you nobody else would touch.”

“Let me repeat: no.”

“They totally had sex,” Peebee whispered.

“Not possible, given the context. If Evfra wanted to get some, he'd have volunteers lined up all the way back to the Milky Way.”

“Double or nothing?”

“You're on.”

Reyes pressed him, ignoring the side conversations. “Those days weren’t so long ago that you’ve already forgotten what it was like. The Resistance, struggling. You, struggling. Waning resources. Spotty intel. And a rash of Milky Way immigrants complicating everything. Who was there for you? Who was the person who got done the things your people couldn’t or wouldn’t do?”  

On the line, Evfra sighed again. “And then we're square?”

“Then we're square.”

“Ugh. Fine. Send me the details once you get them. Have fun extorting.”

“Always do.” He ended the call, turning his gaze back to the group. “Pol, find your friend.”

Peebee opened her mouth to ask him a question.

“None of your business,” he interrupted. “Pol?”

The Salarian blinked his wide eyes and said smugly. “She's down at Umi's.”

“Perfect. Let's go make her an offer she can't refuse.”

Reyes led the way out, leaving the pathfinding teams to trail along like well-trained, over-armed ducklings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone else curious to know how that date with Evfra and the lady they're bribing goes? I love that salty old grump. I've been meaning to shoehorn him into a fic since I started writing in this universe. Glad to finally have the opportunity to make it happen!


	18. The Huntmaster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Violet meets the Huntmaster. At last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confession time: I TOTALLY forgot about one of Ryder's abilities *coughbioticscough* until, like, two weeks ago. So I MIGHT have gone through and made one teensy edit to a previous scene. In the long run, the scene runs exactly the same. But I felt like a giant idiot for overlooking it and couldn't let myself go on that way. So yeah. It's fixed now. *sweats*

Violet woke with a start, smearing drool off her face and wincing as the pain in her side dug in deep. “Shit. Ow. How long was I out, SAM?” 

_ “Twenty-two minutes.” _

They had decided to take a break for SAM to reroute blood networks around her bullet to keep her from bleeding too much internally. She had wedged herself in a gap in the stone wall of one of the tunnels where she wouldn't be easily spotted. It had been uncomfortable, but she was pretty sure SAM throttled the blood supply to her brain to force her to pass out and take a break. That, or maybe she really was more tired than she would like to admit.

“Anybody go by?”

_ “We have been passed by two separate sweeps.” _

“Perfect. Let's go be bait and get armed. We're running against the clock.”

Clutching her side, she unwedged herself from behind the rock, relieving the aches and pains from getting jabbed by rough stone. Everything hurt. She wanted a cup of coffee. She knew that exhaustion, blood loss, and dehydration had her strangled for time. 

The plan she had concocted had some loose ends, but she didn't have anything better up her hypothetical sleeve and SAM hadn't found success trying to talk her out of it. 

Hissing between her teeth, she lowered herself to the uneven floor with the grace of an arthritic cow. She settled on her side, huffing and wincing and debating whether she wanted a cup of coffee or a packet of medigel and a fistful of painkillers more. Her jaw ached from clenching it against the pain. 

“How do I look?” she whispered.

_ “I can't see you, but I imagine you look pathetic based on how you feel.” _

“Thanks, Negative Nancy. Let's see who's laughing when my plan brings this whole ring of lunatics down.”

SAM sighed.  _ “I find very little about this funny.” _

“Funny or not, this is the the job. Not letting these assholes slip through my fingers.” 

Violet knew, deep in her gut, that if she let them spread into the wind, that there would be little finding them. One way or another, she planned on ending things here.

Lexi probably needed to have another conversation about martyring herself again. The last one appeared to have worn off.

They waited another ten minutes, long enough that the rough floor actually felt comfortable and her eyelids grew heavy, her head fogging up. If she napped there, it wouldn't be so bad. It might even give her a better boost when her enemy found her and she had to put up a fight. 

Adrenaline cut through the cobwebs when she heard the crunching of boots echo from down the tunnel. 

_ “Remember, don't hit them too hard with your biotics. We need one alive so they don't soil the uniform.” _

She didn't reply, too busy playing dead. She unclenched her jaw and relaxed her shoulders to the best of her ability. Rocks dug into her side and hip. Mentally, she braced herself for a crapshoot of a fight, imagining the bets that would go down among her friends over the outcome. At least she could take comfort from the fact that they would probably all put their chips in her favor, one way or another, even with the odds stacked against her. She took heart from their imaginary support. They knew what she was capable. So did she.

“Shit, is she dead?”

“Better not be, or all of this is for fucking nothing.”

Light beams hit her, scanning her. 

“Looks like she's bleeding. Larry said he thought he shot her.”

“Well, that's Larry's ass if she bled out. Roll her over and check for a pulse.”

“What? No way! Do you know who this is? You roll her over and check for a pulse. I'm not going near her until she's in restraints.”

“Coward.”

“You do it, if you're so brave.”

“She’s passed out.” 

“She’s the Pathfinder. That won’t exactly stop her.”

“She’s not invincible.” 

“You don’t know that!”

Violet resisted the urge to roll her eyes. 

On their private channel, SAM said,  _ “They are only three meters away. The concussion from your biotics will hit them.” _

The two guards continued to bicker while blue light flared from her body and she directed the energy in a burst outward, aiming it toward their voices. Both men shrieked as the flare caught them and tossed them like ragdolls down the tunnel. Violet sprang to her feet to get them disarmed and bound before they had a chance to shake it off. 

The second she threw herself vertically, the blood drained from her head. Her vision blackened. Everything tilted jarringly and the strength left her knees. 

“Oh fu--”

She didn't think she was out for long, but she woke up on her stomach, cheek pressed against the frigid stone. Her vision took longer to clear, blackness creeping away from the edges and revealing the illuminated tunnel and six pairs of legs. Her arms were immobile, caught behind her back and bound with something. 

“I'm going to throw up. What happened?” she muttered.

_ “You have nothing in your stomach to throw up,”  _ SAM informed her.  _ “You got a head rush and briefly passed out.” _

Hands grabbed her under her shoulders and legs and lifted her into a litter. A woman next to her packed her bullet hole with medigel.

“You didn't take the bullet out, did you?” Violet demanded, her lucidity ushered back in with her rising panic. Without the proper equipment, she would probably end up bleeding out. There were too many little blood vessels in the area. SAM had done his best to reduce blood flow to the area, but without the bullet holding the area stable, who knew what would happen?

“It's still in there,” the woman assured her. “We don't have any professionals to take it out. You, uh, you already killed them.”

“Good. Do not touch my bullet. It stays right where it is until my doctor can get a look at it.”

“She's completely insane,” one of the guards whispered behind her.

“Okay. Let's do this. Take me to your leader,” Violet declared firmly.

“Blood loss can make a person loopy.”

_ “Pathfinder. I have a way you can slip your restraints. You aren't going to like it.” _

Violet felt her gut tightening as she recalled the other times SAM proposed an idea that way, namely the time he killed her to get her out of a biofield. That had been a shitty day, overall, and this one was on track to rival it.

“Dare I ask?” She didn't worry about her captors overhearing her end of the conversation. They thought she was delirious anyway. 

_ “If you dislocate the thumb of your left hand, you will be able to slip free of the cuffs. Your left hand will be ineffective until you return your thumb to its joint, but your dominant hand will be free.” _

SAM was right. She didn't like it.

“Well. Fuck.”

He talked her through how much pressure she was going to need and where to press that it wouldn't break her thumb or seriously damage her ligaments. She would bide her time before executing the plan, see where they were taking her first.

They brought her past the room with the oblivion production where she could taste the palpable despair on the prisoner's shoulders. They watched her like spectators at a funeral procession. It pissed her off that they would feel that despair until she fixed things. 

“Let's get a move on. I've got places to be,” she groused at her captors. 

They took her up an incline and around a few bends and finally into what she could only describe as an evil genius's lair. They settled her litter down on a folding camp table. Computer banks the wall of the cavern up ahead and the room otherwise contained a cot for even the most dedicate workaholic’s sleep, old food containers, and a curtained off area she imagined contained jars of body parts or a bathroom or something. A tiny asari stood in front of a dozen screens, her hands dancing over a control panel. 

The asari held up a finger for them to wait, finishing her task at the computers. Violet's foggy mind caught up with her. The computers meant a signal. The asari was getting it out somehow.

_ “Still no luck contacting the  _ Tempest,  _ but if you get free and overpower everyone, we might have luck hacking into her system,”  _ SAM commented. 

Most of the guards returned the way they came, leaving two to stand vigil on either side of her, both armed. Sidearms only. They were big and burly and probably thought they could keep a weak, bleeding Pathfinder down. They were wrong, but she had to give them credit for optimism.

Finally, the asari turned, clapping her hands together. She looked young, even for an asari, whose ages tended to be pretty ambiguous after the first eighty or ninety years. She strolled up and stood over Violet’s pallet with her dainty hands pressed into her hips. 

“Well then, Pathfinder. We meet in the flesh. I am the Huntmaster, but you can call me Jen.” 

Violet had a few other things she planned in calling Jen before the end of their conversation. She lifted her head to get a better look at the asari. She was slim, not very tall, and lacked any general athleticism. She knew she could take her. One punch and she would probably break.

“Man, you are tough!” the young woman exclaimed. “I mean, I knew. I've been following your career and there's a reason I've been keeping my distance from you. And like, I wasn't ready, you know! I had a plan. First get control of SAM Node, then get SAM. Now, I'm improvising. It sucks. But serious respect.”

She didn't stand still while she talked, her face pointed down at a tablet while her fingers worked across it. She darted between a few consoles, always moving and flipping through screens.

“And now I've got to import some new doctors to remove your implant and I've almost breached SAM Node. It's going to be fine. I've got it under control.”

“Well, that's a relief,” she drawled.

Her wrists were trapped behind her back, not visible to anyone in the room. She started shifting to get her hands in position to pop the thumb. She didn't look forward to it, especially as SAM coached her in keeping a straight face. Violet had a high pain tolerance, but she was still human.

“You want to know something crazy?” Jen twittered, still jumping between consoles and her tablet. “I knew you were taking it to pound town with Vidal, but I had no idea he was the Charlatan! None! I've been digging at that mystery since he came into power because that motherfucker screwed up so many of my plans when he killed Sloane! And I looked into him one time. He was on my list of suspects, but I totally wrote him off. Then when Keema  _ freaked out _ over me getting him arrested--like, I wasn't going to let him get away with selling oblivion and undercut my profits! I've got a business to run--I knew. I just knew he was the Charlatan. I can't believe you kept that secret. I mean, respect, but I seriously thought you were too much of a goody-goody not to report that to Tann. Man, and I tell you what, he’s almost as tough to kill as you are. Hey, you ready?”

Violet didn't bother asking what Jen thought she should be ready for. “Yes,” she replied, and dislocated her thumb.

SAM softened the shock, but the pain still yanked a cry from her lips, her whole left arm locking up, lest she abuse it more. 

_ “Work it free! You need your right arm!” _

So despite the pain, despite her exhaustion, she hitched her shoulder and worked her left hand free. Both of her guards turned toward her. They weren't well trained, because they should have jumped on her immediately. Instead, they watched dumbly as her right arm sprang free and she grabbed the gun right off of her guard's hip, flipped off the safety, and shot him twice, rolling off the litter and turning on the guard on the left. He didn't get his gun out before she unloaded half the clip into him. 

Then she turned to Jen, who held up her tablet with the surface pointed at her. Violet raised the gun, but paused before firing when she realized the asari wasn't shielding herself, but instead showing her something.

“Shit, Pathfinder. Did you break your hand to do that? Fuck, I love you! Big fan. So. Much. Respect.”

The screen depicted the cryo pod information of Elizabeth Reilly, the pseudonym Alec Ryder used for his wife, Ellen, while getting her into the Andromeda Initiative. Very few people knew Ellen, terminally ill and only alive because of stasis, had made the journey to the new system.

“Ah, yep, that got your attention.” Jen lowered the screen and peeked at her. “I released a virus into the Nexus system. If I don't reset a code in ten minutes, cryo pods all over the station fail their life support, including Elizabeth Reilly's. I mean, Ellen’s. I mean...whatever, you get the picture.”

“Bullshit,” she spat, her head light, her hand throbbing, other aches and pains all competing for attention.

The asari grinned up at her. “I could never compete with you, Vi. Not toe-to-toe. I mean, look at you! Look at what you've gone through just to get to me. Man, I want SAM. I want SAM so freaking bad. Your SAM. He’s so much more fucking cool than the others.” She shook her head with a sad, wistful smile. “You win this round, but if you grab me or shoot me, Ellen, and a couple hundred others, will die.”

She thought about it. Violet seriously weighed the options. Part of her told her to shoot the little shit. She could not let her walk away. But she couldn't doom her mother. She couldn't doom the others. She couldn't gamble away their lives. The gun lowered a fraction.

Winking at her, Jen reached out with one hand and typed a command into the keypad next to her. The dozens of screens started blinking. Sparks jumped from the supporting equipment, smoke filling the room. The asari flipped her a salute and sauntered out while Violet doubled over and curled around her pain. 

“There's nowhere you can go, Jen,” she called before she made it out of sight. “The Helius cluster belongs to me. I will hunt you down.”

She glanced back at her, grinned briefly, and left. 

_ “You need to put the thumb back,” _ SAM fretted.  _ “Then let's get out of here and call for help.” _

She followed his instructions, cursing loudly and graphically until she got her joint settled back into place, then grabbed extra ammo from the guard bodies. She still had prisoners to free. Her job wasn't done yet. 

Turning out of the lair, she returned cautiously down the tunnel to take care of the prisoners in the next cavern over and then find the others.

“This hunt is going to be a bitch. Lexi isn't going to like how fast I want to be on my feet.”

_ “She isn't going to like anything about your condition. You are, colloquially, a hot mess.” _

“That's just how I roll and you know it.”

Holding her side, she limped down the tunnel back to the oblivion packaging operation. 

The room was empty.

“No,” she breathed, stopping dead. “No! Fuck! Where are they?”

_ “She must have evacuated them.” _

“There's no way! She would have had to mobilize them…” She bit off her protest. 

Jen had outmaneuvered her. She knew Violet might escape. She was always one step ahead. This whole time, she had been in the lead.

“They might not all be gone. Let's find the other groups.”

Furious tears sparked in her eyes as she thought of their faces. The one had begged her to go for help. Maybe if she had listened…

She swallowed back her doubts. She had failed them, but there might be some left. 

Gritting her teeth, clutching her side, she picked up her pace, racing down the tunnel that led to the other stations, following her flashlight openly, white-knuckling her gun. She swore and cursed as much as she wanted as the pain tore at her where she pushed her body well beyond its limits.

With light and time, she was able to follow her nose and the signs of frequent passage to the other cavern that houses more oblivion packaging. The room was empty. She moved on, pushing deeper, panic clutching her. 

“I promised them, SAM. I promised to get them out.”

_ “I know. You did everything you could.” _

“It doesn't matter how hard I tried if I failed them. They're being treated like cattle! We can't let her get away with this. Fuck, I should have shot her.”

Either the people in the corrupted cryo pods died, or the prisoners disappeared. Or, maybe if she killed Jen, both would have happened. She just couldn't say. She couldn't tell what the right move had been.

_ “I hear voices,”  _ SAM warned.

Violet didn't slow her pace. She marched forward with sweat dripping down her face and gritted teeth, each breath shallow and painful. She rounded the tunnel bend, stooping to fit through the low-ceilinged tunnel, and into a brightly lit chamber filled with UV lamps and green growing plants. Three guards were shouting orders to a group of panicky angara, gesturing with weapons to keep them corralled, while a fourth struggled to free the last few of their collars.

They didn't notice the Pathfinder's approach, absorbed in their task, giving her the opportunity to get close. She didn't trust her aim at a distance, not with her double-vision and wobbly head.

The angara, however, did spot her, babbling frantically amongst each other. They started screaming when she pulled up her gun, but the chaos only confused the guards. Violet stumped up, shot the first two guards at close range, used her biotics to throw the third against the nearby wall where many of his bones snapped, and then shot the third in the leg once, reloaded, and finished her off with two more bullets to the chest and head.

“I need to sit down,” she sighed, slumping back against one of the raised garden boxes. Switching to Salesh, she raised her voice to the group. “My name is Violet Ryder. I'm here to rescue you. I'm personal friends with Moshae Sjefa and Evfra de Tershaav. I'm really fucking tired.”

One woman stepped forward as others clutched her back, head tilted proudly. “And why should we trust you?”

She shook her head. “I don't care. You're free to go.”

Another said, voice tight, “These tunnels are a maze. We'll never get out.”

Raising her head, scraping her hair back and hissing as motion tugged against her bullet. “You can follow me. I'm headed toward the surface.”

“You can barely walk!”

She dropped her hand heavily. “I've been in worse shape.”

_ “That's debatable.” _

She didn’t have the energy to pull a face for her AI. Groaning, she shoved off the edge of the planter box and motioned for the angara. “I know the way out. I can call for backup once we get out of these blasted caves.” She did a quick headcount, totalling the angara at eighteen. Eighteen prisoners out of an estimated sixty. That left around forty were unaccounted for. Forty people Violet failed. 

She started her long limp out. The angara had all freed themselves from their collars and tottered along anxiously, whispering among each other. They worried about her intentions and her gun. They worried that they might not make it to the surface or that this might be a trick. They worried about other friends and family members that had worked in other parts of the tunnels that wouldn’t be joining them in freedom. 

“We failed, SAM,” she murmured as they walked, once again furious at herself for all of her choices, running scenarios where she might have done a better job.

_ “You did your best.” _

“Did I? I missed something. I could have done better. I should have done better.” 

_ “The odds were not good of you even surviving this. You managed to live and free eighteen of the prisoners.” _

“Not enough, SAM.” 

Violet made hard calls before. Abandoning Raeka’s team to save Drack’s scouts had been a particularly ugly decision, one that still kept her up at nights. Some days she wished somebody else would make the tough calls, the ones where somebody ended up dead. 

“Hey SAM?” 

_ “Yes, Pathfinder.” _

“After we hunt down Jen and find the rest of the missing angara, maybe we ought to put in for a vacation.”

_ “I think Lexi would approve.” _

“Think Reyes would get jealous if I vacationed away from Kadara while he’s stuck on house arrest?”

_ “Definitely.” _

“Boo. We just won’t tell him.” 

They backtracked along the tunnels until they crossed the first oblivion packaging room and trekked up the last tunnel that supposedly led out. They still had a ways to go and Violet couldn’t make it. She ended up sitting down to catch her breath while the others went on toward the surface.

_ “I’m picking up some static. I almost have a signal,” _ SAM informed her after a moment. 

“Cool. Am I going into organ failure yet?” 

_ “Not quite…” _

“Great.” She scootched up along the rocky wall until she stood on her own two, wobbly feet. 

One of the angara stood just up the tunnel, watching her skeptically. “I see.” 

“See what?” she grunted. 

He scooped an arm under her to help support her weight. “We were in the deepest part of the tunnel. You didn’t have to come get us.” 

“I knew you might be down there. So yes, I did.” 

“Like I said, I see.” 

Violet’s foggy head almost stopped her from sussing it out, but she had been friends with Jaal for a long time. The angarans lived in emotional honesty. This one recognized her sacrifice. He supported her all the way to the tunnel’s surface. 

Dusk had settled along the Kadaran landscape by the time she broke out into the fresh air. The area the mouth of the tunnel let out onto was pretty dry and arid. Big cloud dusts had been kicked up from vehicles, which had skidded in and were unloading just as she emerged into the crisp evening. Several armed teams piled out and she heard Jaal’s voice boom above the others in Salesh as they made sense of the situation.

She sagged harder against her friend, relief crashing through her as all of the freed prisoners turned and pointed her way. She saw Reyes first, armed and armored, break from the vehicles to get to her. He nearly knocked her over, but he locked her in a death grip and peppered kisses across the side of her face and hair. 

“You’re late,” she griped. “I had to do it myself.” 

“I know. I’m sorry. We worked as fast as we could. Tracing that cunt of an asari was a shitty process. Are you okay? What are you wearing? Where are your shoes? Did you kill the Huntmaster?”

She hugged her arms around him for support and addressed all of his questions. “No. A toga because I woke up naked and this was all I had to work with. That’s why no shoes. And no, the bitch got away. Also, I’m shot, I’m dehydrated, I had to dislocate my thumb to get out of handcuffs and I’m not positive I got it back quite right, my feet are cut the fuck up, I’m cold as fuck, and the Huntmaster still has around forty angaran captives, so we need to get back on the trail while it’s still hot--”

“You got  _ shot?” _ he bellowed, turning and dragging her with him. “Lex! She got shot!” 

Wincing, she tried to push off of him, but his death grip had only tightened. “I’m fine. I just need fluids.” 

“You need more than fluids, Violet, goddamnit!” 

The others had caught up by then and all started yammering on all at once about togas and bullets. Lexi rushed forward and pried her from Reyes’s grip to get her to one of the fleet of vehicles parked outside the mouth of the cave. She tried to talk to explain everything that happened until the doctor threatened to jab a sedative in her ass. Instead, SAM gave a detailed report and timeline of events, including their confrontation with Jen. Cora got on the comm links to issue a warning to Hyperion about securing SAM Node and a warning to the Nexus about their possible cryo pod breach.

Reyes hovered while the rest of the team entered the tunnels to try to find the missing angaran captives, although she knew they were long gone. They intended on appropriating Jen’s computer banks, even though they were smoking slag, and running through the tunnels for anything else that might be interesting. Meanwhile, her fidgety boyfriend lurked over Lexi’s shoulder while the doctor hooked her up to an IV and began taking scans. 

“Hold on a minute.” Violet pried the oxygen mask away from her face. “You’re supposed to be on house arrest!” 

“My apartment burned down.” 

“Did not,” Lexi muttered, fixing the mask back in place. “Stay still, Ryder.” 

She pulled it back off. “Who won the bet?”

“What bet?” Reyes sighed.

Jaal, who had stayed out to wrangle the angarans, drifted in close for the conversation. “Ah. We were so busy looking for you, we weren’t paying attention. The fire happened and you escaped Monday night, didn’t you, Reyes?” 

“No, it was early. Was somewhere around oh-three-hundred, Tuesday morning.” 

She pried the mask back off with the closest thing to enthusiasm she could summon. “That was my bet! I said Tuesday, didn’t I?” 

Lexi forced it back on without a word.

Reyes swooped in close, smoothing her sweaty hair off her forehead and kissing her there. “You gave me two days?  _ Dios mío _ , I love you.” 

“I do have some faith.” 

Suddenly, her doctor gave out a screech as she went over the scan readout. “I can’t believe you’ve been walking around this long with this bullet lodged in this location as half your kidney torn up! You should have bled out hours ago! I’m putting you out and slowing your system until I can get you into surgery. You’re going to have a brutal recovery this time around.” 

Panic seized her, shoving aside the hazy lust she had building for Reyes. “What? No! I have to get after Jen and the angaran prisoners she has. I promised them, Lex. Just work a patch job and I’ll submit to any surgery you want later, but if we let the trail go cold, we might never recover them. She’s smart, Lex. This won’t--”

Lexi ignored her and stuck something through the IV in her arm. The world suddenly swallowed around her. She got her middle finger raised halfway while Reyes stroked her hair and the abyss took her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You didn't think I forgot about the Pathfinding team's bet about how quickly Reyes would escape his apartment, did you?
> 
> Also, yes, the Huntmaster is totally a teenage girl with a giant case of megalomania. Because who doesn't love supervillains?


End file.
